3rd Ed The core identity of the Fighter chassis and how to make it stronger [Archive]

eunwoler

2020-09-01, 09:50 PM

A topic done to death. Didn't feel like necroing because some mod already viciously and vitriolically destroyed me in my pms for my wrongdoings (they were actually very nice about it this is a filler prelude)

The Fighting Man, the Fighter class is by name, the guy who fights well. The Magic User by definition uses magic that is undisputedly what he does best in comparison. As in, the Fighting Man does not magic at all. However, all classes fight well and necessarily so. The magic users and clerics and sorcerers fight as well as the Fighting Man, later a hell lot better. Meanwhile they also magic and demolish every other part of the game whereas the Fighter is content in his original identity, which sucks and gets to fight sometimes

To completely balance the Fighter, either he has to eat a name change and that's not happening, or he has to be better at combat or comparable everywhere else. Neither of those things are happening either so most feasibly and optimally we see a Fighter who can fight as well as the other classes, and not just be set to Spectator mode whenever anything comes around not involving the hack and slash of Delilah the Dragon Dungeon Boss

Neither of those things are happening because people quite like the identity of the Fighter. It's intuitive and vastly expansive and customisable and just an enjoyable fantasy. People like the troubled Caucasian human fighter with an eyepatch and/or scar because it's pretty sweet to be the badass normal who kicks ass in a world with dimension spamming wizards and things.

So what needs to be kept to the Fighter to keep its identity in spite of any buffs that could be made to the 3.5e Fighter?

Thematically:
A) He should be internally a plausible mundane. No magical qualities innate to the fighter. He might wave a magic stick or garbs though.
B) He/she should be customisable to literally anything. No allegiances, nothing about specifically being a hero, no premade story telling, no race specific traits none of that. This is the only part where I included the she pronoun, conveniently.

And gameplay wise, regarding his chassis, thereby:
A) He should not have any spellcasting or otherworldly shenanigans tied to his build.
(I have never seen a fix with spellcasting. I have seen fixes that violate the 'plausible' mundane point though. Like a feat about jumping good that eventually turns to hopping from continent to continent and planet to planet. When the plausible mundane barrier is broken the character feels ridiculous and loses his badass normal identity.)
B) He should be customisable to literally anything, and not have premade and unavoidable feats like in the Tome fighter

So these things should be kept from what I understand. Probably some other stuff is uncontroversially essential too but I don't know them.

How about what needs to be changed to buff him? This is a more frequently tapped discussion and I miss alot of this.

From what I know:

A) The fighter still needs to be able to resolve non combatty things
B) on this he has crap skill points, and even crappier skill choices, and literally no additional fighter chassis feats helping this area of the game to speak of
C) Even in combat the fighter cannot resolve combatty things that aren't strictly about inputting X damage and watching the big bad fall after X is slotted in
D) The fighter is confined to doing full attacks every round for efficiency's sake
E) Bad mobility
F) The fighter has crap save rolls
G) And just a terrible ability to tank in general
H) The fighter at higher levels gets the same feat choices he has at lower levels. Meanwhile, spellcasters get access to more and more spells, and more and more powerful ones
I) Feat chains
J) The fighter has just enough feats and such specific ones to do one combat niche well and not beyond that

I surely missed enough points to complete the remaining alphabet. But from those current points, what I can imagine can solve these:

A) Feats or some chassis feature that function outside of combat
B) More skill points and better skill choices
C) Better feats that resolve certain things the Fighter cannot inside of combat
D) Some way to make full attack less than the only viable option
E) Some innate, or some fighter specific addition to mobility
F) Better save rolls or access to feats to massively improve said rolls and defenses
G) See F
H) Scaling feats. Either access to a large and exhaustive list of stronger feats, or feats that scale (perhaps with level, or BAB)
I) No more feat chains. Feats that more broadly cover a list of improvements, such as scaling feats
J) See I

What else can be done to concoct a better fighter? Perhaps the Fighter identity is too strong and the Wizard too cheesed to ever balance the Fighter into a tier 1 or on par with the Spellcaster, but at least he could one day be competitive with it. Or at least not be dumbly hampered by its own designations. What else could be considered? Do you agree with the issues highlighted in the post and potential solutions?

Do you have a pretty sweet homebrew you'd want to post up? I'd like to know. My grizzled veteran soldier who is white, wields a 2 hander, fought in a war but doesn't anymore, and is cynical but has a moral code, he's itching to get stronger and compete in a game or two. Let's talk some buffs

Dr_Dinosaur

2020-09-01, 10:14 PM

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-01, 10:24 PM

eunwoler

2020-09-01, 10:35 PM

It seems to me that you've decided to present a problem for which there are a number of easy solutions, demand that we not use those solutions, then complain that the problem is hard. Of course it's hard, you won't let us use the tools we know will fix it!

There's no reason why we need to have a "Fighter" class at all. The name is, as you note, pointlessly limiting. Everyone fights, and the nature of the game is that they should be assumed to do so at a reasonably equal level of efficiency. Therefore the name "Fighter" is perhaps the worst of any class, as it does not tell us what he does (we know he fights, the game is about fighting), it doesn't tell us what he's good at (as combat contributions are expected to be balanced, broadly speaking), and it doesn't tell us how he does it (anything you do in a fight is, almost by definition, "fighting" and therefore fair game for a "Fighter"). So the obvious solution to this problem is to replace the Fighter with classes like Crusaders and Barbarians and Champions and Rangers who have identities and can therefore be given the tools they require to effectively solve problems.

And even if we accept that the Fighter needs to exist for whatever reason (perhaps we feel that renaming it will destroy the game, exactly as renaming the Magic User did not), there's no reason he can't use magic. There is no longer a Magic User class for him to be contrasted with, and even if there was the fact that one uses magic does not prevent the other from doing so, just as the existence of the Fighting Man did not prohibit the Magic User from participating in combat. The Fighter exists in a world where magic is a real and accepted phenomenon. He need no more abstain from using it to preserve his identity than he need abstain from other fundamental parts of his world like "gravity" or "electromagnetism".

So the solution is simple, and it's the one that much of the fantasy genre has figured out already: give the man some damn magic. Perhaps he could be like the Knights Radiant from The Stormlight Archive who get magic powers including "sword" and "good at fighting".

I agree to an extent; when I say core I mean the ubiquitous features that everyone can agree the 'Fighter' should be. Regardless of whether you think the Fighter itself should exist, if there is a Fighter, how does he look? And to that extent while it may be easily digestible for you to have the spellsword warrior with some intrinsically magical features I feel like it's a controversial enough premise to not consider it in the light of constructing a base chassis of a fighter that still stands the test of balance.

On the other hand magic couldn't be totally excluded from a balanced fighter. I would imagine when it comes to mechanical equivalence the fighter can match spellcasters to an extent at high levels, to the tones of fighter having adequate rolls in every mathy element to survive most things and high enough attacks and digits to hit most things but thematically the fighter probably does need some aspect of the magic you mention. There's no plausible reality where the real Sir Lancelot from Planet Earth is so skilled that he can cut down dragons with a steel sword. But where skill is capped, Lance can still compete when either he is either superhuman in some way like Marvel characters as Hulk or Thor or has high powered equipment, like Marvel characters as Iron Man or Thor.

Maybe some sort of feature integrating some degree of magic arms could be considered a core feature? I think it would be not so ubiquitous still. Not everyone's fantasy of their epic level fighter is going to wield magic in any form. And maybe the magicless fighter never goes beyond level 8, if that.

eunwoler

2020-09-01, 10:41 PM

Well you could always bring him and his mage friends closer to balance by using Spheres of Power+Might,which would force them to specialize somewhat and allow him to do more than wait to full attack in combat or sit on the sidelines outside of it. If this is Pathfinder you could also give him Combat Stamina for free at 1st level as recommended in Unchained, which would help amp up the usefulness of his combat feats.

But if we're talking about complete homebrew, I'd say there's really no reason for the Fighter and Rogue not to be a single class. In the divorce, one got the tactical positioning and high mundane skills and the other got hitting really hard and (in PF) extra oomph from their weapons and armor. A class that's just a Fighter/Rogue gestalt would *look* overloaded and might need tweaks to sneak attack or to bump a few 1st level features back slightly, but would at least hit Tier 3 by my estimation and that's generally the sweet spot

I do like the Spheres alot but perhaps there is too much uniformity in the designs of these spheres. In the same way people disliked 4e for having each class look the same with different flavors Spheres might make people apprehensive in the same way. +, it does tap into wuxia level abilities later down the line which isn't for everyone. Although I might argue that wuxia flavor is inevitable at higher levels for mundane martials

Combat Stamina is something I love the idea of. Not so much for balance reasons as I don't think it empowers the fighter very much. But because of it being a very clean and easy to understand/integrate way to give fighters more and nicely tactical things to do than full attack. I think this would be a cool way of solution to add. Maybe if the choices were buffed a whole lot?

Ehh, I still think there's enough individual flavor and features to make a Rogue that isn't a fighter justified. At least it'd be too divisive to be a satisfying fix for a bigger audience. And as you say, a gestalt would look very bloated

AvatarVecna

2020-09-01, 11:27 PM

My general suggestion for fixing fighter is to use Spheres Of Might (in particular the Conscript, which is just a better fighter with enormous flexibility in the build without losing any of that classic fighter feel), but that solution isn't always well-received. Part of the issue with that solution, and many others that have been suggested over the years, is that past a certain level anything that allows the fighter to be relevant to even remotely the same degree as the wizard is considered "anime nonsense" by certain people. It doesn't matter if my personal idea of fighter could theoretically have HiPS, or double-jumps, or could cut holes between dimensions with the right sword stroke - that's anime nonsense that won't be tolerated by the kind of people who wanna play a normal fighter, damn it! They wanna play Hugh Mann who's super-good at things normal people can do, they don't wanna give him all these new capabilities like how Superman could originally jump real good but eventually he could fly instead and why that changed wasn't really explained. No flight. No dimension hopping. No swords breaking on your chest. Hugh Mann is too normal for that. Even Batman isn't typecast this hard.

Since you seem like you're wanting a Fighter fix that avoids stuff like that, we're going to have to stick to more normal stuff. Namely, no new capabilities whatsoever, just doing things you already do, but better. Here's my thoughts in that direction:

1) Way more skill points, more class skills, flexible class skills.

If "Fighter" is supposed to be a generic Fighting Man class, it's weird that his skills are so limited. It should at least theoretically be possible for a Fighter to also be a smooth-talker or an acrobatic or a sneakthief on top of his fighting. Yes, some of that's possible by delving into splats, particularly with other classes more designed for that thing. But sometimes you wanna play a highly-skilled individual who can also fight (Rogue) and sometimes you wanna play a Fighting Man who's also got some skill (cooler Fighter). Like, there's some people who honest-to-god will insist that Fighter shouldn't have Spot or Listen because "hurr durr its called FIGHTER not GUARDSMAN you're not SUPPOSED to be a good lookout".

2) Good Will Save

You're not some dull guard keeping an eye on the city walls, you're not some wandering thug with weapon skill and nothing else. You're skilled with your weapon because you have dedication beyond most mortals. You adventure because you have a yearning for danger that can't be matched. You fight through the pain because you have endless determination. Leave the weak-minded wannabe fighters back at home to guard the nobles, the ones that have no dreams, no dedication, no ambition, no determination. You are a Fighting Man, and you will push through anything that comes your way through sheer force of will.

3) Fast Healing

HP isn't just meat. Part of it is your "luck" - how an attack that would've skewered a lesser man merely grazes you. Part of it is the aforementioned determination: where this pain would cause lesser men to abandon their weapons in lieu of curling up in the fetal position and bawling, you grit your teeth and push through and keep all your practice in mind to land the perfect blow even as your whole body feels like it's on fire. I'm sure other people have other ideas of what can make up "hit points". If HP was just meat, it wouldn't make any sense to be able to heal without magic or medicine - that's not how healing works in real life. But because the recovery isn't just physical, it's fine that you can recover from blows remarkably quickly.

Some people will say that meat is still a part of HP, so fast healing shouldn't heal everything. Similarly, from a meta-perspective, if Fighting Man heals himself to full, that detracts from the usefulness of healing magic. A good way to balance this is to take inspiration from 5e: Fighter gets Fast Healing while below half health, and it can't heal him higher than half health. The amount of healing he gets increases with his level (although exactly how much to give can be a bit flexible).

4) Movement speed

Running, jumping, climbing, and swimming are the areas where Fighting Man can get faster. Sprinting can be an increase in base speed and maybe the Running multiplier. Cross-country can be an endurance boost to long-distance movement of any kind. Swimming can be faster swim speed, but also the ability to hold his breath for longer. Climbing can accomplish more movement in the same time span, maybe even an actual climb speed.

5) Action Economy shenanigans

A lame Warrior has to spend 6 seconds making two attacks without doing anything else. A real Fighter is not so limited.

Okay so what you do not want to do here is just gradually give the Fighter extra actions on top of his existing ones. Not only does that not really make sense, but it makes the Fighter more fun to dip in multiclassing or gestalt, which will be done by casters. Instead, what you wanna do is, every level (or every two levels maybe? eh), Fighter can select a few things (attacking, moving, particular skill uses, feats with particular actions) and can do those a step faster (or in half the time, if they take more than a full round action). Something like this maybe:

Full --> Standard --> Move --> Swift --> Immediate --> Free 1/round --> Free 2/round --> etc

This allows Fighter to attack and move and use skills blazingly fast, especially if optimized for a particular thing. How frequently you get to do this, and how many things upgrade each time you gain it, will make the difference between being Batman and being The Flash. Like, if you get this every level, and you get to choose two things, and you chose "Move" and "Full attack" every time, you would have:

Free (16/round): Make a full attack
Free (18/round): Move your speed

...which feels pretty Flash to me. But it's still pretty Fighting Man, just...getting absurd. Maybe do it a bit slower than "twice per level". But the base idea is solid, I think.

6) Parry/Deflect

Fighters gets +[Str] and +[Dex] AoOs per round, and can spend AoOs to Parry and Deflect. This lets them roll Attack vs the enemy's attack roll to avoid the thing entirely. Maybe even if it's a really big boulder or a spell (even if it's a spell that doesn't offer an attack roll). You'd probably have to play around with this one to keep it fair-ish, but it could be done.

EDIT:

Although I might argue that wuxia flavor is inevitable at higher levels for mundane martials

Level is part of it, but charop-level is a big deal here as well. A cleric healbot and a wizard blasting away (as WotC probably intended) can play in the same party as a perfectly normal fighter without much trouble well into high-epic. But if the cleric and the wizard start looking at buffing and utility stuff and using that for combat advantages, things can get skewed pretty hard even at low levels.

Troacctid

2020-09-01, 11:50 PM

Why don't you just port in the 4e or 5e version of the class? Neither of those editions has a problem with fighter being underpowered, and it's not exactly super hard to convert.

Ignimortis

2020-09-02, 12:37 AM

The Fighter's core identity, as things everyone would agree on Fighter being, is lackluster by itself. The lowest common denominator for a Fighter is "a guy with a sword", and that just doesn't work after level 5 or 7 unless you make a lot of arrangements for that to matter. Fighter is an NPC class in 3e, simply because they never do anything fantastic other than being inhumanly tough and good at swinging weapons, which is something everyone does after a while.

Why don't you just port in the 4e or 5e version of the class? Neither of those editions has a problem with fighter being underpowered, and it's not exactly super hard to convert.

5e's Fighter isn't underpowered for one reason only. The whole game is designed around things Fighter can do, and there is basically nothing in combat that can ignore just being attacked for HP damage with a magic weapon. Monsters simply cannot do anything that would interact with mechanics to which the Fighter doesn't have access.

eunwoler

2020-09-02, 01:11 AM

Why don't you just port in the 4e or 5e version of the class? Neither of those editions has a problem with fighter being underpowered, and it's not exactly super hard to convert.

4e is alright but people don't like the flavor much and its built for less theatre of the mind and more tactical game

5e would be as unbalanced as regular fighter. In 5e other classes and the world in general is nerfed for the fighter and co, not the other way around

eunwoler

2020-09-02, 01:23 AM

Biggus

2020-09-02, 01:50 AM

The simple answer is: take some of the features they have from PF and 5E.

Personally, I give them Bravery from PF (it always bugged me that the Fighter is one of the two classes most likely to run away from danger making little shrieking noises) and Indomitable from 5E to improve their saves, a version of Armour Training (PF) which allows them to treat armour as lighter for purposes of movement, and a version of Superior Critical (5E) which increases their threat range with a chosen weapon, which unlike most similar abilities stacks with keen or Improved Critical (because I wanted them to have something fighty which was uniquely theirs).

eunwoler

2020-09-02, 01:54 AM

AvatarVecna

2020-09-02, 01:58 AM

This is kinda the issue I was alluding to, though. These:

On the other hand, the stuff like cutting open portals is not achievable by any level of brute force. You could lift mountains and not cut through time and whatnot. You shouldn't be able to cut ghosts by having big muscles or being so skilled. So that kind of more writerly and conceptual feat that is unachievable even by a Charles Atlas superhuman character is where I personally draw the line.

What else can be done to concoct a better fighter? Perhaps the Fighter identity is too strong and the Wizard too cheesed to ever balance the Fighter into a tier 1 or on par with the Spellcaster, but at least he could one day be competitive with it.

Are both perfectly acceptable desires. Wanting a fighter that can stay competitive in a high-tier environment is a perfectly fine way to play. Wanting a fighter that remains Hugh Mann, just being a massively- upgraded version of some IRL guy at the gym, is also a perfectly fine way to play. They are both valid separately, but they are not compatible with each other. You say that Fighters just logically have to become either Superman or Iron Man to stay relevant, and that's true...but Charles Atlas can't become either. He can't make his own magic items, and he can't fly like Superman under his own power - if he could, he wouldn't be Charles Atlas anymore. He can't punch ghosts no matter how strong or skilled he gets, and that means he's always going to be dependent on charity to be relevant in such fights - either magic items or spells that are necessary for him to do literally the only job he has.

This is even an issue with spheres of might to a degree: most of the classes in there are T3, with some builds becoming T4 if they make themselves too typecast into combat - but they're still going to mostly need certain magic items, just because SoM doesn't give those abilities and they're basically a requirement to be relevant past the mid-levels (like flight, for example). With the inclusion of Legendary Talents, those classes can get into high T3 and low T2 pretty quickly, shedding some of their dependency on items and spell buffs. But even with all that legendary anime nonsense, they can't constantly rearrange what nonsense abilities they have, and so they still aren't on the same level as the cleric, or the wizard, or the druid - classes that have access to all roles, and can switch between them as desired. The best they'll get is competing with sorcerer: having a handful of broken abilities they've optimized around, letting them be relevant most of the time and overwhelming in specific circumstances.

And that's a perfectly fine way to play as well. It's not T1. And it's not Charles Atlas. Charles Atlas as a concept is low-mid level, mid-op, and low-T3 at best. Busting out requires magic...or anime nonsense. T3 is perfectly fine and can still be relevant in high-level play, if you've got enough power and variety. But it still won't be competitive with T1 like you were asking about, because T1 isn't about huge numbers. Attack +infinite and Damage +infinite doesn't matter if the other person is incorporeal, or can teleport away from the spot you're attacking before the attack lands, or is immune to damage.

You want a Fighter that feels Charles Atlas-y, and still breaks into T1? This is probably the closest you'll get, but fair warning: basically NOBODY likes it, including to a degree the person who freaking made it. They've got several other classes like that, which are Barbarian, Bard, Monk, Ranger, and Rogue equivalents (and there's also a few more that are a bit less directly inspired by existing classes), and nobody is ever happy when they get requested in a recruitment thread.

Troacctid

2020-09-02, 02:14 AM

4e is alright but people don't like the flavor much and its built for less theatre of the mind and more tactical game

5e would be as unbalanced as regular fighter. In 5e other classes and the world in general is nerfed for the fighter and co, not the other way around
5e's Fighter isn't underpowered for one reason only. The whole game is designed around things Fighter can do, and there is basically nothing in combat that can ignore just being attacked for HP damage with a magic weapon. Monsters simply cannot do anything that would interact with mechanics to which the Fighter doesn't have access.
Do you guys just not have combat in your games or what? You do realize warblades are basically a fighter with extra fight, and they kick ass, right? Is this in dispute somehow? Are warblades considered useless now?

eunwoler

2020-09-02, 02:24 AM

Do you guys just not have combat in your games or what? You do realize warblades are basically a fighter with extra fight, and they kick ass, right? Is this in dispute somehow? Are warblades considered useless now?

I mean, the Warblade isn't just a fighter with extra fight, it's a way better class with tons of different options that allow it to solve problems (mostly in combat) the base fighter cannot. You can literally cancel any spell, effect or condition on you, that's not extra fight thats an entirely new ability that didn't exist for the fighter. You can heal yourself, tons of new save roll options, unleash truckloads of conditions and nerfs and buffs, way more mobile, in general your action economy is far better.

You're right, the warblade does have extra fight. A ton of extra fight. Thanks for acknowledging the tons of necessary features the fighter is missing I appreciate you.

Troacctid

2020-09-02, 02:30 AM

eunwoler

2020-09-02, 02:31 AM

This is kinda the issue I was alluding to, though. These:

Are both perfectly acceptable desires. Wanting a fighter that can stay competitive in a high-tier environment is a perfectly fine way to play. Wanting a fighter that remains Hugh Mann, just being a massively- upgraded version of some IRL guy at the gym, is also a perfectly fine way to play. They are both valid separately, but they are not compatible with each other. You say that Fighters just logically have to become either Superman or Iron Man to stay relevant, and that's true...but Charles Atlas can't become either. He can't make his own magic items, and he can't fly like Superman under his own power - if he could, he wouldn't be Charles Atlas anymore. He can't punch ghosts no matter how strong or skilled he gets, and that means he's always going to be dependent on charity to be relevant in such fights - either magic items or spells that are necessary for him to do literally the only job he has.

This is even an issue with spheres of might to a degree: most of the classes in there are T3, with some builds becoming T4 if they make themselves too typecast into combat - but they're still going to mostly need certain magic items, just because SoM doesn't give those abilities and they're basically a requirement to be relevant past the mid-levels (like flight, for example). With the inclusion of Legendary Talents, those classes can get into high T3 and low T2 pretty quickly, shedding some of their dependency on items and spell buffs. But even with all that legendary anime nonsense, they can't constantly rearrange what nonsense abilities they have, and so they still aren't on the same level as the cleric, or the wizard, or the druid - classes that have access to all roles, and can switch between them as desired. The best they'll get is competing with sorcerer: having a handful of broken abilities they've optimized around, letting them be relevant most of the time and overwhelming in specific circumstances.

And that's a perfectly fine way to play as well. It's not T1. And it's not Charles Atlas. Charles Atlas as a concept is low-mid level, mid-op, and low-T3 at best. Busting out requires magic...or anime nonsense. T3 is perfectly fine and can still be relevant in high-level play, if you've got enough power and variety. But it still won't be competitive with T1 like you were asking about, because T1 isn't about huge numbers. Attack +infinite and Damage +infinite doesn't matter if the other person is incorporeal, or can teleport away from the spot you're attacking before the attack lands, or is immune to damage.

You want a Fighter that feels Charles Atlas-y, and still breaks into T1? This is probably the closest you'll get, but fair warning: basically NOBODY likes it, including to a degree the person who freaking made it. They've got several other classes like that, which are Barbarian, Bard, Monk, Ranger, and Rogue equivalents (and there's also a few more that are a bit less directly inspired by existing classes), and nobody is ever happy when they get requested in a recruitment thread.

Hmm I don't fully agree with this. I don't think the martial has to be a mundanely rationalised peer to casters by doing things they can do in the same way. The nature of balance in DnD comes down to problem resolution - can X class resolve things that Y can't? Even if Charles Atlas can't fly he's not necessarily weaker than the Wizard who can if he can achieve the same outcomes. Now he can leap that chasm. That ranged opponent? He's got enough range and damage on his thrown spear to knock that baby down. Ghostly beings you can't hit with a weapon? Your intimidating warrior spirit feat will scare that enemy away or into submission. Maybe he doesn't have a specific feat to help him against every save down to its minutia, but he does have a feat like Indomitable from 5e that makes him better at all rolls, so he's got a fighting chance. AND he doesn't have crybaby will saves anymore.

Plus as you said and I have conceded, its either going to take innate hypermundane physicality or magic items to accomplish absolutely everything. Ghost touch should solve the incorporeality as well as some mental scare tactics. Perhaps some additional magic equipment should be written into the class - at level 10 perhaps the fighter has +5 extra enchantment to divvy between his weapon and armor.

I don't think T1 is ever achievable without an absurdly overfluffed and very outstretched martial, as you have shown with the provided homebrew. I think a T3 character is a real sweet spot, so long as he can solve anything, even if its poorly he can feel relevant at any point.

eunwoler

2020-09-02, 02:36 AM

Okay, and you just named a bunch of features that the 4e and 5e fighter have, which supports my point that they are good fixes for the class.

I never contested the 4e's inability to meet the majority of the balance mechanical demands. The 5e doesn't do nearly as much as the Warblade. Its nowhere near as mobile, its impressive features are more limited compared to the perpetually refreshing maneuvers of the Warblade, the battlemaster has some nice condition inflicting maneuvers though.

Ignimortis

2020-09-02, 02:38 AM

Okay, and you just named a bunch of features that the 4e and 5e fighter have, which supports my point that they are good fixes for the class.

Not exactly. 5e Fighter cannot deal ability damage, cannot pierce resistances or immunities, cannot heal themselves significantly (Second Wind really falls off very quickly), doesn't get Blindsight, gets very limited ways to mess with action economy, and is also limited in inflicting conditions. Sure, if you port the 5e Fighter and get rid of all of its' resources save for Action Surge, making everything else at-will, it might be close to a Warblade. But as-is, it's still lackluster. (So's Warblade, just later on, maybe after level 13 or 15 instead of 5-7).

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-02, 07:08 AM

On the other hand, the stuff like cutting open portals is not achievable by any level of brute force. You could lift mountains and not cut through time and whatnot. You shouldn't be able to cut ghosts by having big muscles or being so skilled.

Why not? Ghosts don't exist. Who are we to say that in a universe where ghosts did exist, you couldn't be strong enough or train hard enough to be able to punch ghosts? The Fighter exists in a universe of magic. There's no reason to tie him to our standards of realism.

DMVerdandi

2020-09-02, 07:09 AM

Honestly if I had an ideal single classed fighter, It would need to address a few things, and consolidate a few things.

>Problem to address
Seperation of themes of a warrior.
Why can't a fighter sneak? Aren't they specifically men at arms, but without a necessary code of conduct?
Why does the fighter not rage? shouldn't someone on the field of battle be used to it? Aren't adrenaline rushes pretty common to fighters, or at least states of focus? something? why can't they inspire on the battlefield? Why are all these things behind a wall?

Over-reliance on magic items
Without tons of gear, the fighter is simply the most mundane of all classes. It performs far worse than a rogue even, in reality and does not have either the breadth or depth of abilities to manage if both were naked in a room. Fighter performs worst in a nude gladiatorial deathmatch.
Magic items are a part of the game yadda yadda.

Martial Classes are dips

>Solution

Make an unchained fighter as a warblade ACF. Give it a cool name or something that denotes being a singular warrior that is not just your average.

Let's say "Brave".

D10
6xint skills per level, warblade skills

* Full initiator status. Access to all martial schools, Can permanently add maneuvers known by purchasing martial scripts. Cannot use adaptive style feat. Multiclassing in other initiator classes only gives half initiator level progression.

*Weapon familiarity

*Martial Flexibility [cannot use to learn maneuvers]

That's it.
That's the whole thing. That's the perfect fighter.
Modular, flexible, and strong.

wanna emulate some other classes' Schtick? Is it similar to any of the base classes? Make it into a maneuver or stance based on the level you get it from another class.

eunwoler

2020-09-02, 07:12 AM

Why not? Ghosts don't exist. Who are we to say that in a universe where ghosts did exist, you couldn't be strong enough or train hard enough to be able to punch ghosts? The Fighter exists in a universe of magic. There's no reason to tie him to our standards of realism.

I mean there's still a consistent internal logic that presides over the game. You can't be strong enough to override gravity (unless you're a warblade, for some reason that has been pretty famously memed), hitting incorporeal things is not tied to physical force generated or skill at arms

eunwoler

2020-09-02, 07:14 AM

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-02, 07:28 AM

I mean there's still a consistent internal logic that presides over the game. You can't be strong enough to override gravity (unless you're a warblade, for some reason that has been pretty famously memed), hitting incorporeal things is not tied to physical force generated or skill at arms

Sure you can. You can Balance on a cloud (DC 120), and all sorts of things that shouldn't be able to exist given the square/cube law fly perfectly happily (e.g. dragons). Moreover, we're talking about changing the rules. Why not change them in a way that allows the Fighter to do the sort of thing that martial characters in the source material already do, and that we know produces reasonably powerful characters?

eunwoler

2020-09-02, 07:48 AM

Sure you can. You can Balance on a cloud (DC 120), and all sorts of things that shouldn't be able to exist given the square/cube law fly perfectly happily (e.g. dragons). Moreover, we're talking about changing the rules. Why not change them in a way that allows the Fighter to do the sort of thing that martial characters in the source material already do, and that we know produces reasonably powerful characters?

I'd say a key part of that disparity in what we can accept as believable in verse comes from a semblance of a justifiable preexisting fact - the dragons can fly because even though its physically impossible technically, somehow the dragons generate enough lift with their wings to propel themselves, thus we'd expect them to fail flying in the case of a vacuum. Balancing on a cloud, impossible, but the logic is that they are able to distribute their weight so well even on something as light as a cloud. On the other hand there is no rational connection between strength and being able to touch ghosts that can be bridged by an increase in the strength stat.

I think the easier solution is to a) have other mundane solutions to beat ghosts like Intimidation checks, or a quick ghost touch weapon enchantment. Rather than entirely new chains of laws and logic to make less intuitive solutions like punching hard enough to take out Spirit Mussolini

AvatarVecna

2020-09-02, 07:53 AM

eh I think the separation can be pretty easily reasoned. Why can't the fighter sneak well? Because sneaking well is a rogue thing, it's part of the definition of being a rogue over a fighter. A fighter could learn to sneak, but then he'd have multiclassed into rogue. The rogue is just the name remember, it doesn't come before the attributes it entails, someone who possesses these attributes entails a rogue. If a wizard learned to fight good he has now got levels in fighter

The issue with this line of thinking is that it's a big part of why the fighter is lame as he is. Fighter is intended to be this pretty generic kinda warrior class, where it could be any warrior, and the only thing that reflects that is the feats. Instead of having flexible class features that lets the fighter be any subset of "person who fight goodly", he has no class features besides feats. Even the class features fighter can get via ACFs are for the most part completely divorced from any fluff and theoretically useful to every kind of fighter - and therefore, aren't especially useful to any kind of fighter.

You look over the list of ACFs, and they fall into three categories: generic stuff that isn't worth the feats it costs, ACFs intended for particular organizations/races that are maybe worth the cost (such as Zhentarim), and then handful of ACFs that are suited for particular styles and are well worth it (such as Dungeoncrasher). Zhentarim is well-known not cuz it's super-good (it's alright), but because it's free and it gives new capabilities that are useful to most any fighter. Dungeoncrasher is locked into a very particular kind of playstyle, but it's a playstyle that has a lot of support in the game so who cares if it locks the fighter even further into the best style available to him?

I do think one of the only viable, easier and thematically + mechanically sensible ways to balance the fighter to the level of the wizard is tons of magic gear.

This approach gets a bit weird no matter how you slice it.

One approach could be that the fighter has "built-in" enchantments, somewhat akin to Vow Of Poverty, in addition to normal magic item distribution. Maybe he can change them over time, maybe he can't. But the idea would end up being that he trains himself to be capable of this, or that. Maybe this fighter trains to be an Olympic High Jumper, and has +30 Jump "enchanted" into his body for free from his class. Maybe this fighter has trained to find weak points over other things, and every weapon he picks up acts as if it were Keen. Maybe this fighter. Where this gets odd, obviously, is where some kinds of enchantments can break the idea of what a Fighting Man should be able to do unassisted. It's all well and good if you're playing Superman, and your "built-in" enchantment is ghost-punching or laser eyes, but if you're wanting to lean more towards Charles Atlas both of those are weirder than super-jumping. A lot of it would depend on just how flexible you want this to be, and would either have to be micromanaged to avoid fighter being able to pick anything you think they shouldn't be able to, or you just let it fly free with maybe some general limitations on how high things can get relative to your level and let them loose to build their concept.

The other approach is less "I'm a fighting man in a magic world, so I too am inherently magic" and more "I get more treasure than everyone else", which...should spell out the issue with this approach. If you're operating on the assumption that the fighter needs more than his fair share of gear to stay competitive, then you're also admitting that the fighter is underperforming currently - and thus, isn't earning more than his fair share of gear. This approach is seeing that the story ("we are great individuals on the same level coming together to make something more") and the reality (fighter falling behind) don't match, and putting the burden of fixing that disparity on the pocketbooks of every other party member, the ones who weren't failing to pull their weight in the first place. There's barely an in-universe reason for a fighter in a party of four to get 1/4th the treasure, let alone more than that.

The solution to that is giving fighter features that make items more...efficient in their hands. That way, they still get their fair share of treasure, but it's more effective than its market price in their hands. This could be something like the above (which I've already pointed out a potential issue for), but it could also be where giving the fighter money turns into more bonus than if it was just purchased. Item crafting is one way to make Fighter have more equipment without giving them more than their fair share of the loot, and heck Craft is even one of the skills that wasn't taken away from Fighter to avoid them stepping on some other classes toes.

...bu then, this is also toe-stepping isn't it? Artificer already exists. And while making Fighter the Iron Man class would succeed in making Fighter high-tier (maybe even T1, if you give enough crafting stuff) fighting man while still keeping it generic enough for them to be whatever they want, I don't think "only Iron Man" is the approach you were wanting?

eunwoler

2020-09-02, 08:26 AM

The issue with this line of thinking is that it's a big part of why the fighter is lame as he is. Fighter is intended to be this pretty generic kinda warrior class, where it could be any warrior, and the only thing that reflects that is the feats. Instead of having flexible class features that lets the fighter be any subset of "person who fight goodly", he has no class features besides feats. Even the class features fighter can get via ACFs are for the most part completely divorced from any fluff and theoretically useful to every kind of fighter - and therefore, aren't especially useful to any kind of fighter.

You look over the list of ACFs, and they fall into three categories: generic stuff that isn't worth the feats it costs, ACFs intended for particular organizations/races that are maybe worth the cost (such as Zhentarim), and then handful of ACFs that are suited for particular styles and are well worth it (such as Dungeoncrasher). Zhentarim is well-known not cuz it's super-good (it's alright), but because it's free and it gives new capabilities that are useful to most any fighter. Dungeoncrasher is locked into a very particular kind of playstyle, but it's a playstyle that has a lot of support in the game so who cares if it locks the fighter even further into the best style available to him?

This approach gets a bit weird no matter how you slice it.

One approach could be that the fighter has "built-in" enchantments, somewhat akin to Vow Of Poverty, in addition to normal magic item distribution. Maybe he can change them over time, maybe he can't. But the idea would end up being that he trains himself to be capable of this, or that. Maybe this fighter trains to be an Olympic High Jumper, and has +30 Jump "enchanted" into his body for free from his class. Maybe this fighter has trained to find weak points over other things, and every weapon he picks up acts as if it were Keen. Maybe this fighter. Where this gets odd, obviously, is where some kinds of enchantments can break the idea of what a Fighting Man should be able to do unassisted. It's all well and good if you're playing Superman, and your "built-in" enchantment is ghost-punching or laser eyes, but if you're wanting to lean more towards Charles Atlas both of those are weirder than super-jumping. A lot of it would depend on just how flexible you want this to be, and would either have to be micromanaged to avoid fighter being able to pick anything you think they shouldn't be able to, or you just let it fly free with maybe some general limitations on how high things can get relative to your level and let them loose to build their concept.

The other approach is less "I'm a fighting man in a magic world, so I too am inherently magic" and more "I get more treasure than everyone else", which...should spell out the issue with this approach. If you're operating on the assumption that the fighter needs more than his fair share of gear to stay competitive, then you're also admitting that the fighter is underperforming currently - and thus, isn't earning more than his fair share of gear. This approach is seeing that the story ("we are great individuals on the same level coming together to make something more") and the reality (fighter falling behind) don't match, and putting the burden of fixing that disparity on the pocketbooks of every other party member, the ones who weren't failing to pull their weight in the first place. There's barely an in-universe reason for a fighter in a party of four to get 1/4th the treasure, let alone more than that.

The solution to that is giving fighter features that make items more...efficient in their hands. That way, they still get their fair share of treasure, but it's more effective than its market price in their hands. This could be something like the above (which I've already pointed out a potential issue for), but it could also be where giving the fighter money turns into more bonus than if it was just purchased. Item crafting is one way to make Fighter have more equipment without giving them more than their fair share of the loot, and heck Craft is even one of the skills that wasn't taken away from Fighter to avoid them stepping on some other classes toes.

...bu then, this is also toe-stepping isn't it? Artificer already exists. And while making Fighter the Iron Man class would succeed in making Fighter high-tier (maybe even T1, if you give enough crafting stuff) fighting man while still keeping it generic enough for them to be whatever they want, I don't think "only Iron Man" is the approach you were wanting?

Thats true. I guess the notion of keeping a mundane fighter's flavour and class fantasy alive and pumping him up to level 20 is ultimately a pipe dream. He stays mundane, or he stays low level.

Maybe Fighter was a class that should've not been allowed beyond 10. 6 is probably the real power level endgame of the class given E6's effectiveness. That or he does have to become the Hulk after all.

Quertus

2020-09-02, 09:10 AM

So, what is worth keeping?

The Fighter, who only fights. It needs a warning label, but is otherwise fine. Maybe we could buff it with Monk saves, Rogue-like precision damage boosts (like "add class level to damage on all attacks (not just sneak attacks)"), and ACFs to get things like Barbarian rage or Ranger chosen enemy.

The Muggle, who can perform all kinds of amazingly mundane feats. The could include first aid (up to CPR resurrection), bardic knowledge, anything involving inspiration, perfect memory, epic-worthy skill boosts, the ability to train others ("item crafting" for muggles - give others feats, skills, maneuvers, unique talents, etc, at the cost of your time and XP).

The Authorian - able to perform feats of legends, like cutting mountains in half, drinking a river, holding up the world, dating a girl for 14 years, or surviving as just a head.

5e's Fighter isn't underpowered for one reason only. The whole game is designed around things Fighter can do, and there is basically nothing in combat that can ignore just being attacked for HP damage with a magic weapon. Monsters simply cannot do anything that would interact with mechanics to which the Fighter doesn't have access.

I'm struggling to think of anything - other than "no flying, no ranged" - that would make 5e foes different in that regard.

Sure you can. You can Balance on a cloud (DC 120), and all sorts of things that shouldn't be able to exist given the square/cube law fly perfectly happily (e.g. dragons). Moreover, we're talking about changing the rules. Why not change them in a way that allows the Fighter to do the sort of thing that martial characters in the source material already do, and that we know produces reasonably powerful characters?

Huh. Rewrite the laws of reality to make "poke things with stick" a viable strategy? If we do that, though, wouldn't that be as much a bane to the value of adventurers over armies / communities of peasants as Bounded Accuracy has been?

Ignimortis

2020-09-02, 09:22 AM

I'm struggling to think of anything - other than "no flying, no ranged" - that would make 5e foes different in that regard.

The fact that they don't, by and large, have a lot of access to non-damage, non-save abilities. Compare a 3e Balor to a 5e Balor, or a 3e Ancient Red Dragon to a 5e Ancient Red Dragon. The only ones who actually cast spells are spellcaster enemies who by default tend to have low AC/health, and their save DCs aren't higher than an equivalent level caster.

Huh. Rewrite the laws of reality to make "poke things with stick" a viable strategy? If we do that, though, wouldn't that be as much a bane to the value of adventurers over armies / communities of peasants as Bounded Accuracy has been?

Don't think that was about "make poking things with a stick a viable strategy". It sounded more like making skills able to produce fantastic effects that would be at least close to being on par with actual magic, like martial heroes in literature/mythology/anime do?

Unavenger

2020-09-02, 09:28 AM

Another thing to try is perhaps these (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?588051-New-Powerful-Mundane-Classes-for-3-5-(PEACH)), especially the challenger/guardian/vanguard, which are all fighter-adjacent. These are what I came up with from trying to save the same problems, and I never even finished the parts that went beyond mundane (look at how sparse the exceptional/fortunate/legendary sections are) because those weren't the part of it I cared about as much as I cared about making cool stuff that doesn't have to go into blade magic territory. Are they T1, T2, just really strong T3? I don't know, but they work, and they make you feel cool without stamping on anyone else or getting too stamped on, and you can just not take all of the supernatural stuff and it stilll works. Give 'em a try.

Efrate

2020-09-02, 10:59 AM

I'm been considering 2 things which fix some fighter issues but have yet to implement them. This mostly is PF since that's my current groups preferred system. The players are pretty much all young (teens, my nephews) and they do not want complexity but they want effectiveness. They also are terrible despite repeated talks by me (dm) and the one other older player at buying relevant magical stuff.

Bake in pathfinders automatic bonus progression to the fighter class, starting at level 6. They alone get that, plus all their magic gear. Also give every fighter 6 super pounce. Not just charging, but move and full attack always. No restrictions other than it needs to be physical weapon attacks. No spiritual weapon, druid flame blade, weaponlike spells, eldritch glaive, just actual sword. You lose both if you multiclass into anything, not sure on after x levels they would get it back.

It keeps them good at fighting, fixes the necessary WBL since its virtually doubling, and fixes the awful moving and attack problem. Your 2nd and other multiple attacks might not hit but at least you get them. You still need magical gear to cover bases but your hit it with a stick and live through being hit with a stick are taken care of automatically so you can do the thing you are supposed to as you should.

Multiclassing is discouraged more in PF and this is designed with that in mind.

It's pretty simple, and is perfect for the people who want to play guy at the gym dialed up, or for newer, low system mastery, or casual players.

Bartmanhomer

2020-09-02, 11:00 AM

There are classes for that: Warblade, for example, is a Tier 3 class.

Wildstag

2020-09-02, 11:22 AM

Jopustopin

2020-09-02, 11:22 AM

I made a fighter fix (link in sig) where I feel like I addressed a lot of these issues. The core philosophy of any fighter fix should be that they feel like a fighter. I.E. nothing that breaks the fourth wall for fighters to be able to do.

I have yet to see it in play past level 10 (Rogue 1 / Fighter 9) but I am very satisfied with what he's able to do.

My fix:

More Skill Points and more choices
Good Will Saves
Allows the fighter to optimize his feat choices for both low level and high level by making PHB II feat retraining part of the fighter's class features.
Improved version of the Warblade's Weapon Aptitude by allowing it the ability to affect armor, shields, and even entire weapon groups. At later levels the time it takes to adjust is reduced to the point that at 17th level it's essentially "not-an-action".
Basic training to make basic fighting styles part of the fighter build without having to pick one (i.e. sword and board, THF, TWF, Unarmed Strike)
Features that are like iron heart surge in that they allow the fighter the ability to get back into the fight after a failed save
An uncanny sense of when combat has started at later levels

Darg

2020-09-02, 11:56 AM

The way I see it, the minimum number of skill points for any class should be 4. Fighters should also get an expanded skill list. Survival, tumble, diplomacy, bluff, spot, listen, use rope, and heal are good options. Fighters don't have to be simple trained soldiers.

I think extra attacks gained from full BAB progression should not receive a penalty to hit. (Monks should be a full BAB class but that's off topic)

I like to also allow damage reduction to stack with the same type (haven't seen this become a problem and people take the armor specialization feat now)

My first change would be to give fighters the weapon specialization feat line (including greater weapon focus and supremacy) as a class feature that also give their bonus to checks to protect against special attacks. You can reduce your progression in the feat line by one feat to add another weapon to benefit from the specialization class feature. If the fighter chooses unarmed strike as their focus they get improved unarmed strike for free.

I would also add bonus fighter feats every odd level.

Fighter 10/15 to qualify for bounding assault/rapid blitz.

Also, to fix the head scratchiness that fighters don't receive full initiator levels they should get full levels except when dual classed with initiators.

These keep the spirit of the fighter intact and allow it to do more than just a few things

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-02, 12:10 PM

Don't think that was about "make poking things with a stick a viable strategy". It sounded more like making skills able to produce fantastic effects that would be at least close to being on par with actual magic, like martial heroes in literature/mythology/anime do?

Pretty much. Though as I've said elsewhere, I would consider that stuff magic in and of itself, as I don't think there's a fundamental distinction to be made between "supernatural effects produced by robed people chanting" and "supernatural effects produced by strong people doing kung fu". But basically, if you look at the rest of the fantasy genre, there's no real issue with just giving the martial types abilities on par with what spellcasters can do. Kaladin gets flight, a spirit companion, super speed, healing that beats save-or-sucks, and empowers a bunch of his friends with similar powers. That's the kind of thing a high level Sword Guy (or in his case Spear Guy) should be doing.

Mars Ultor

2020-09-02, 12:45 PM

I think what could have gone a long way to making the Fighter better is if the Style and Tactical feats weren't so prohibitive in entry. If a Fighter could have ignored the Weapon Focuses and Weapon Specializations that were prerequisites for them, the Fighter could have taken styles as bonus feats for extra variety in their gameplay while also being a walking armory. Power Attack and Improved Sunder/Bull Rush are standard on a lot of Fighters, but if you could just use the feats without the prerequisites, even a dex-build could use this occasionally.

Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization probably could have just been lumped into one feat that requires Fighter Level 2 instead of two separate feats, and the War Domain could have just "you have proficiency with your deity's favored weapon and a +1 to attack rolls while wielding it".

I see styles like Cavalry Charger and Einhander and Shock Trooper and think that those would have been better if the Fighter could just learn them without prerequisites, becoming a more varied warrior instead of a specialist like the class turned into. As an example, none of the maneuvers granted by Cavalry Charger build off of its prerequisite feats.

This would really only serve to make the Fighter more combat focused, but it's literally in their name, so why not lean into it harder.

I like these ideas and I'd go one step further. Weapon Focus/Specialization should be a class feature, not a feat. A Fighter can take your suggested combined feat if he chooses, but he gets one weapon free to start.

Improved Bull Rush, Improved Trip, and the other similar feats should be things Fighters are taught from the beginning. They should get a +2 to AC against Attack of Opportunity and +2 to the maneuver just because they're a Fighter. Taking the feat gives them the other advantages in addition to their class ability.

Some other things to consider are allowing Fighters to add their natural Strength bonus to skills requiring Charisma. Big guys are impressive, people should immediately recognize them as heroes. Maybe let them add their Strength bonus to saves as well.

After a few levels Fighters should be able to gain the advantages of Enlarge Person naturally. They're a little stronger, they can lunge a little and gain some reach, they're not as easy to grapple or knockdown. Also, their damage goes up, their medium longsword acts as a large longsword in their hands, now its damage is 2d6 instead of 1d8. However, because they're not actually larger their Dex/AC remains unchanged.

Fighters should have some sort of Bardic Knowledge but only about monsters. Their entire class is about fighting, older Fighters should be passing on information to younger Fighters. While they don't gain any sort of Favored Enemy bonuses, they should be able to get a roll to see if they know anything about the monster in question, such as special powers, immunities, etc.

Armor doesn't reduce their movement. Dwarves are able to move at their normal rate regardless of armor because they're so used to wearing heavy armor, Fighters of any race should have the same advantage. In the same vein, Fighters using a shield should get a +1 to AC in addition the shield's normal and/or magical bonuses.

I think it was 1st Edition where Fighters had one attack per level if they were fighting 1 HD creatures, let's bring that back to some degree. Against opponents who are half the Fighter's level or less, Fighters can trade 2 points of Base Attack for one extra attack. Being able to fight a lot of lesser warriors (and the reach advantage from their permanent Enlarge Person) is a staple of being a Fighter.

Two more skill points per level plus two class skills of choice. Fighters should be able choose any two skills and make them class skills, and four skill points per level so he can be somewhat competent out of combat. In addition to being able to add his Strength bonus to Charisma-based skills, the Fighter can take Diplomacy as his new class skill and become the party's face if he wishes.

Scaling feats. This would apply to all PCs but since the Fighter gets more feats and more feat-chain type feats, this is particularly advantageous for him. Cleave becomes Great Cleave, Two-weapon Fighting becomes Improved Two-weapon Fighting at the appropriate level. It's ridiculous to have to use a feat to get the logical extension of an existing feat.

Also, Fighters are lucky. They get to reroll any roll once per day as if they had the Luck Domain power.

Dr_Dinosaur

2020-09-02, 02:11 PM

I do like the Spheres alot but perhaps there is too much uniformity in the designs of these spheres. In the same way people disliked 4e for having each class look the same with different flavors Spheres might make people apprehensive in the same way. +, it does tap into wuxia level abilities later down the line which isn't for everyone. Although I might argue that wuxia flavor is inevitable at higher levels for mundane martials

Combat Stamina is something I love the idea of. Not so much for balance reasons as I don't think it empowers the fighter very much. But because of it being a very clean and easy to understand/integrate way to give fighters more and nicely tactical things to do than full attack. I think this would be a cool way of solution to add. Maybe if the choices were buffed a whole lot?

I've been playing with spheres for a while and I can promise you being "samey" is absolutely not a problem. Magic is designed specifically to *avoid* casters feeling similar through Casting Traditions and the build-a-list method of acquiring talents, and Might gives martials a lot of tricks on top of what they already do. As for the Wuxia concern, I think you're right that it's inevitable at higher levels, but players and DMs are explicitly encouraged to not use or disallow Legendary Talents or even base (likely youxia handbook) talents that don't fit their game's tone.

Ehh, I still think there's enough individual flavor and features to make a Rogue that isn't a fighter justified. At least it'd be too divisive to be a satisfying fix for a bigger audience. And as you say, a gestalt would look very bloated

Fair enough, though the Vigilante class is basically halfway there anyway and looks slick enough on the page aside from the unneccesary Batman gimmick.

Kyutaru

2020-09-02, 02:38 PM

To completely balance the Fighter, either he has to eat a name change and that's not happening, or he has to be better at combat or comparable everywhere else. Neither of those things are happening either so most feasibly and optimally we see a Fighter who can fight as well as the other classes, and not just be set to Spectator mode whenever anything comes around not involving the hack and slash of Delilah the Dragon Dungeon Boss

Neither of those things are happening because people quite like the identity of the Fighter. It's intuitive and vastly expansive and customisable and just an enjoyable fantasy. People like the troubled Caucasian human fighter with an eyepatch and/or scar because it's pretty sweet to be the badass normal who kicks ass in a world with dimension spamming wizards and things.

So what needs to be kept to the Fighter to keep its identity in spite of any buffs that could be made to the 3.5e Fighter?

Could of things holding back the Fighter:

- He's lost his identity as the weapon specialist.
Anyone can use magic items now, the hard restrictions of the past are gone. Wizards have lost nearly all of their casting restrictions from AD&D and they have the ability to do everything the Fighter can do. Weapon proficiency has been rolled into feats but at great cost while Wizards get them basically for free in addition to their unmitigated casting. The problem stems from Feats doing far too little, like +2 damage to a sword attack, while casters get an entire d6 damage die just for existing to the next level up. That damage hike even applies to ALL their spells while Fighters have to choose where it applies to, and not in broad categories like "All Fire Spells" but in specific categories like "Only longswords". Feats NEED to do more as they do in the later edition.

- He's trash at resolving out of combat stuff.
Grappling is to me the most useful combat and out of combat talent of STR characters, especially in this edition. But there's only so many times you need brute strength. He's a one trick pony in need of more tricks but it's been that way across all editions. The trouble with simply adding more non-combat tricks to him is that people actually LIKE the Fighter for his simplicity. He and the Barbarian are rated among the most satisfying combat classes because they don't make people feel like they're being idiots in combat for not selecting the correct spell or ability. They play very straight forward and have few trap options with an obvious upgrade path to power depending on your goals. So while Fighters may suck outside of combat it may not be an issue if he is the god of battle. Once combat initiates he should be the linebacker capable of making or breaking the quarterback's play, who in this case is the Wizard.

- His weapons are static and his attacks diminish.
Multi-attack is hit with harsh penalties while spells can multi-attack without them. You get four meteors that all hit for the same amount and AOE spells don't suffer diminishing returns with each additional target. Would it truly break the game to alleviate these penalties? Does a fighter attacking and HITTING five times per round make him that much better than a spellcaster nuking things with fire? Especially ask this when his attacks are primarily getting flat increases well below the average of what casters get and often these increases are on attacks that target singular creatures rather than the multi-target effects of spells. Attacks are also disadvantaged by having to deplete a health bar while spells can Save or Die for auto-victory. Weapons failing to upgrade in lethality without heavy investment in class picks is partly to blame for this. Why a Fireball gets to deal 10d6 damage but a legendary sword will never do more than 1d6 plus its modifier I'll never know. Getting hit by Excalibur should certainly FEEL like a 10d6.

- His combat versatility is one-dimensional.
Fighters inflict physical damage. That's it. Any other type of damage they deal is dependent on weapon access usually. But that was OKAY in AD&D because Fighters had a small armory of swords they carried around for specific purposes. Even in Dungeons & Dragons Online the martial players will carry around an assortment of swords with various modifiers to suit different purposes. Yet in that game the weapons are noticeably powerful and possess unique variation options that make them artifact quality while the actual artifacts surpass what even the gods wield. This is important because Fighters don't have the same level of access to magical enhancements that they once did. In old school editions where Wizards gained 1 hp per level after 9, having a sword with +3 damage mattered a lot. Now not so much. The scaling hasn't kept up and Fighters should be more like Gilgamesh, swapping between swords to handle the current threat. Coupled with boots that grant flight and rings that grant invisibility and belts that boost luck, Fighters can easily be as much a magically imbued fantasy character as the Wizard while actually contributing to the battle.

Basically, to improve fighters I would:
- Fix their feats to both require less and do more
- Fix their items to scale better and give them a wealth of choice
- Fix their class identity as the weapon master

If you see a Fighter with a sword and laugh because you don't feel threatened then the game is broken. A Fighter wielding his favored weapon should be like staring into the face of death itself.

GoodbyeSoberDay

2020-09-02, 03:20 PM

I don't think the fighter needs to be as versatile and game-breaking as a wizard. I think they just need to be competent at their jobs without much fuss, like a Warblade. That's because IMO it's a much bigger deal for a character to be woefully incompetent than for a character to have the potential to be ridiculously overpowered - or in other words, outside of intimidate shenanigans, the CW Samurai is a bigger sin than Gate.

With that in mind, I would make the common changes - good will, more skill points, some simple way to move and full attack - and then add some more stuff like the PF armor/weapon features and even more feats. The most important thing, however, is to make feats worthwhile. That's the 3.5 fighter's whole shtick, so that shtick should be good without lots of system knowledge for picking the few great feats. A lot of this can be accomplished by simply providing scaling benefits to feats (e.g. weapon focus bonus scaling with some fraction of fighter level), sometimes by merging feat chains into one progressive feat (e.g. TWF line). All of a sudden once all your bonus feats aren't going to that feat chain you need to be effective you can branch out and get other interesting things with your feats.

Magic items are still a crutch in this case, but that's necessary if the character can't be magical. At least now fewer resources need to be spent on baseline effectiveness, and more can be spent on basic robustness re: detection modes, flight, spell/effect protection, tactical teleportation, and so on.

Elves

2020-09-02, 03:25 PM

Class-based systems tend to do better when the classes are either minimalistic and few or specific and numerous. Assuming the latter, "fighter" arguably should be an NPC class, while a PC should be something more particular, like a barbarian or a knight.

Yes, it makes things more specific, but a class-based system is already not naturalistic when it comes to the breadth of abilities people can acquire, it's fundamentally archetypal, so leaning into the archetypalism makes sense.

If keeping the fighter, I agree that the leaping across continents and punching down castles stuff is distasteful. The easiest way to make them more competitive is probably to give them anti- abilities instead of pro- abilities. Things to counter, ignore, and break magical effects, and to emulate spell effects like time stop that aren't of necessity magical. Teleportation is probably off the table and that's fine. Flight being off the table can be OK as long as you have flying items and decent rules for flying mounts or flying skateboards or whatever.

Troacctid

2020-09-02, 03:34 PM

Not exactly. 5e Fighter cannot deal ability damage, cannot pierce resistances or immunities, cannot heal themselves significantly (Second Wind really falls off very quickly), doesn't get Blindsight, gets very limited ways to mess with action economy, and is also limited in inflicting conditions.
Almost all of those are things 4e and 5e fighters either have access to natively or can easily get from items, and the ones that aren't are of questionable necessity. Do you really need ability damage? That's a stretch.

I never contested the 4e's inability to meet the majority of the balance mechanical demands. The 5e doesn't do nearly as much as the Warblade. Its nowhere near as mobile, its impressive features are more limited compared to the perpetually refreshing maneuvers of the Warblade, the battlemaster has some nice condition inflicting maneuvers though.
Getting two to four attacks as a standard action with no strings attached is, in my experience, as good as or better than most strike maneuvers, and lets you move and attack just fine. It doesn't even have to refresh.

Seerow

2020-09-02, 04:03 PM

Years ago when I was still gung-ho on trying to fix classes myself, my fighter fix was focused on giving fighters more flexibility in their feats.

Basically you eventually get 4 full sets of feats for every fighter bonus feat, that you can swap between at will. In addition I grabbed the Brawler feature that lets you pick new feats on the fly. Added a few other features to help with general utility, but the hot swappable combat styles were definitely what I considered the core pillar of my fix, and something that really gave the Fighter identity in games I ran with it. The link's in my homebrew stuff in my sig if you're interested.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-02, 04:31 PM

The easiest way to make them more competitive is probably to give them anti- abilities instead of pro- abilities. Things to counter, ignore, and break magical effects, and to emulate spell effects like time stop that aren't of necessity magical.

This is a solution that is floating periodically in various contexts, but it ends up being pretty miserable in practice for the same reason that having Stax or Draw-Go being the best deck in a MTG format is miserable. Games are fundamentally about doing stuff. Giving people abilities that stop other people from doing stuff has to be very limited to preserve fun. The Hulk bouncing bullets off his chest is fine, but he needs to follow that up with super strength, not with also negating Thor's powers. You certainly could balance the Fighter that way, but if you are going to balance the Fighter by having him turn off all high level abilities, it seems better for everyone involved to just accept that the Fighter is a class that stops being appropriate once you reach high level and demand that he PrC into something useful.

Elves

2020-09-02, 07:34 PM

You certainly could balance the Fighter that way, but if you are going to balance the Fighter by having him turn off all high level abilities, it seems better for everyone involved to just accept that the Fighter is a class that stops being appropriate once you reach high level and demand that he PrC into something useful.

Fair point. Though if you're going to create precedent for, say, a 10-level base class, that could just be the definition of an NPC class (which would also avoid the absurdity of 20th-level commoners). Because I can't think of any other PC base classes that would merit the 10-level treatment.

I don't think reducing its levels is strictly necessary. Things like Tome of Battle/POW include proactive fighter abilities that are appropriate for high levels, and if you add those, the anti-magic abilities I mentioned are just the fighter making room to do their own offensive gameplay, like any other class does.

But it's reasonable to conclude that "person who, uh, you know, fights" isn't specific enough to be a PC class. D&D's attempts at being a general modeler of fantasy stories have always been compromised by its class system, which works better when you're unafraid to set a specific class fantasy.

So you can make it work as a 20-level class without going full Superman, but in the bigger picture I see the argument for forcing players to play something more high concept.

(Once you go more specific with the concept, it's also easier to fill in the high level abilities. Say a character wants to play a realistic warrior. A barbarian and a knight might both be like that at low levels, but their themes give them a clear direction to progress in that the player has already bought into.)

TheCrowing1432

2020-09-02, 08:19 PM

Well how about some actual class features that do things?

Fighters have no class features to speak of, other then a bunch of feats, which, any, and every class, can take, in addition to their class features.

So a fighter can only ever be good as his feats, which while there ARE some powerful feats, those powerful feats, again, can be taken by other classes to augment their existing class features, which the fighter does not.

Bartmanhomer

2020-09-02, 08:27 PM

Warblade is better than a Fighter. The maneuvers and stances are very decent and solid compare to the Fighter class. As I mentioned before that the Warblade is Tier 3. Of course, it's not a perfect class but it's better than a fighter class.

Kelb_Panthera

2020-09-02, 10:13 PM

I mean, the Warblade isn't just a fighter with extra fight, it's a way better class with tons of different options that allow it to solve problems (mostly in combat) the base fighter cannot. You can literally cancel any spell, effect or condition on you, that's not extra fight thats an entirely new ability that didn't exist for the fighter. You can heal yourself, tons of new save roll options, unleash truckloads of conditions and nerfs and buffs, way more mobile, in general your action economy is far better.

You're right, the warblade does have extra fight. A ton of extra fight. Thanks for acknowledging the tons of necessary features the fighter is missing I appreciate you.

This always gets so grossly overstated.

First let's address the iron heart surge elephant; it's such a poorly written maneuver that no two people will tell you the same thing when asked what it works against. It doesn't even create a necessary mechanical exception for shaking off a lot of the worst things you'd want to use it against since it doesn't lift the restrictions on needing to be able to move and act if you're paralyzed or petrified, for example. It does something but exactly what is so open to interpretation that it might just as well do nothing. Finally, it's a third level maneuver. Any character can pick it up at level 12 provided they sink one prior feat into another iron heart maneuver, including the fighter.

Moving along, the healing available to a warblade (iron heart endurance) is pathetic for the level it comes online. It's merely twice the character's level on a d12 class. That might be a fifth of his HPs and he can't even use it until he's below half. Since that's the only healing maneuver he has, at that, he can only do it every other round, provided nothing else makes it necessary to use that round's swift action like using a counter on the previous round or changing stances.

Saving throw options are only 4 options; three that allow you to replace one of your saves with a concentration check and one that lets you make an immediate reroll. These are all immediate actions and so cannot be used on the same round with any of the others.

Nerfs and buffs are actually pretty few and pretty minor. Pretty much all of them amount to ac and attack roll adjustments or damage boosters. One of the best of them for a certain type of build; bonecrusher on a crit-fishing tiger-claw specialist isn't even the equivalent of a 1st level paladin spell. It merely makes crits more likely, it doesn't guarantee them.

On the mobility front, the damage maneuvers make it so that you're less inefficient on rounds you want to move and attack instead of just standing and full attacking but the math washes out; you don't actually do more damage than you would with a full attack and you're now on all or nothing instead of the full attack's likely at least partial damage. Two diamond mind maneuvers actually improve mobility by allowing a charge with all it's down-sides removed (bounding assault) and both moving and full attacking (quicksilver motion).

Finally, the action economy difference is completely non-existent. Both the fighter and the warblade (and every other class for that matter) have options available to them for each action type. A whole host of fighter bonus feats involve making swift and immediate actions as well as specialized full round and standard actions that modify standard options.

When you then consider the fact that a warblade -can't- get all of these options because of having the fewest maneuvers known and readied of any martial adept, it looks a -whole- lot less impressive.

Then we consider the overlap; martial study and martial stance are fighter bonus feats and, unlike the warblade, the fighter isn't limited what discipline he can choose from. He is limited to only three maneuvers but can take as many stances as he's willing to spend feats on. His lower initiator level means he doesn't get them at the same time or as powerful a set of maneuvers as the warblade but a number of them are still quite good and scale just fine regardless of IL. Then there's the fact that a -lot- of warblade maneuvers are actually just reskinned feats from elsewhere in the game, many of which -are- fighter bonus feats.

And while you didn't mention it, I'll bring up the fact there are actually unique fighter features from ACFs. Have a resource: http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=8732.0 There's some nice overlap with warblade maneuvers in there for a fighter too.

Warblade and fighter are -way- closer to each other in capability than basically anyone gives them credit for. The warblade just has all his goodies in the one book. If the warblade is T3 then so is the fighter. Personally, I'd peg 'em both as high T4.

Now if you want to talk about a swordsage or especially a well built Master of Nine and say T3, I'm with you but not warblade. Crusader's closer but probably below that line too.

To be 100% clear, I don't intend this as an attack against the fighter, the warblade, or eunwoler. I -like- both classes and haven't interacted with the poster enough to form an opinion. I just get tired of seeing this gross misconception bandied about as if it were the gospel truth.

Now, on to the topic at hand.

Let's be 100% honest here. If you gave the fighter everything that people who give their opinions in these threads say he should have, what you'd end up with is monk, rogue, fighter, and warblade gestalted together with one of the evasions swapped for mettle, all of the afformentioned fighter ACFs without swapping them for bonus feats, the monk features' armor restriction removed, and probably abundant step and empty body removed. Probably throw in power attack and combat expertise as bonus feats without the prerequisites too, just to be sure.

Goes -way- past overkill in my mind but there are a -lot- of people that would still merrily say that such a thing is -still- too weak, in spite of the fact it'd almost certainly be right near the top of T3.

Bartmanhomer

2020-09-02, 10:39 PM

This always gets so grossly overstated.

First, let's address the iron heart surge elephant; it's such a poorly written maneuver that no two people will tell you the same thing when asked what it works against. It doesn't even create a necessary mechanical exception for shaking off a lot of the worst things you'd want to use it against since it doesn't lift the restrictions on needing to be able to move and act if you're paralyzed or petrified, for example. It does something but exactly what is so open to interpretation that it might just as well do nothing. Finally, it's a third level maneuver. Any character can pick it up at level 12 provided they sink one prior feat into another iron heart maneuver, including the fighter.

Moving along, the healing available to a warblade (iron heart endurance) is pathetic for the level it comes online. It's merely twice the character's level on a d12 class. That might be a fifth of his HPs and he can't even use it until he's below half. Since that's the only healing maneuver he has, at that, he can only do it every other round, provided nothing else makes it necessary to use that round's swift action like using a counter on the previous round or changing stances.

Saving throw options are only 4 options; three that allow you to replace one of your saves with a concentration check and one that lets you make an immediate reroll. These are all immediate actions and so cannot be used on the same round with any of the others.

Nerfs and buffs are actually pretty few and pretty minor. Pretty much all of them amount to ac and attack roll adjustments or damage boosters. One of the best of them for a certain type of build; Bonecrusher on a crit-fishing tiger-claw specialist isn't even the equivalent of a 1st level paladin spell. It merely makes crits more likely, it doesn't guarantee them.

On the mobility front, the damage maneuvers make it so that you're less inefficient on rounds you want to move and attack instead of just standing and full attacking but the math washes out; you don't actually do more damage than you would with a full attack and you're now on all or nothing instead of the full attack's likely at least partial damage. Two diamond mind maneuvers actually improve mobility by allowing a charge with all it's down-sides removed (bounding assault) and both moving and full attacking (quicksilver motion).

Finally, the action economy difference is completely non-existent. Both the fighter and the warblade (and every other class for that matter) have options available to them for each action type. A whole host of fighter bonus feats involve making swift and immediate actions as well as specialized full round and standard actions that modify standard options.

When you then consider the fact that a warblade -can't- get all of these options because of having the fewest maneuvers known and readied of any martial adept, it looks a -whole- a lot less impressive.

Then we consider the overlap; martial study and martial stance are fighter bonus feats and, unlike the warblade, the fighter isn't limited to what discipline he can choose from. He is limited to only three maneuvers but can take as many stances as he's willing to spend feats on. His lower initiator level means he doesn't get them at the same time or as powerful a set of maneuvers as the warblade but a number of them are still quite good and scale just fine regardless of IL. Then there's the fact that a -lot- of warblade maneuvers are actually just reskinned feats from elsewhere in the game, many of which -are- fighter bonus feats.

And while you didn't mention it, I'll bring up the fact there are actually unique fighter features from ACFs. Have a resource: http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=8732.0 There's some nice overlap with warblade maneuvers in there for a fighter too.

Warblade and fighter are -way- closer to each other in capability than basically anyone gives them credit for. The warblade just has all his goodies in the one book. If the warblade is T3 then so is the fighter. Personally, I'd peg 'em both as high T4.

Now if you want to talk about a sword sage or especially a well built Master of Nine and say T3, I'm with you but not warblade. Crusaders closer but probably below that line too.

To be 100% clear, I don't intend this as an attack against the fighter, the war blade, or eunwoler. I -like- both classes and haven't interacted with the poster enough to form an opinion. I just get tired of seeing this gross misconception bandied about as if it were the gospel truth.

Now, on to the topic at hand.

Let's be 100% honest here. If you gave the fighter everything that people who give their opinions in these threads say he should have, what you'd end up with is monk, rogue, fighter, and warblade gestated together with one of the evasions swapped for mettle, all of the aforementioned fighter ACFs without swapping them for bonus feats, the monk features' armor restriction removed, and probably abundant step and the empty body removed. Probably throw in power attack and combat expertise as bonus feats without the prerequisites too, just to be sure.

Goes -way- past overkill in my mind but there are a -lot- of people that would still merrily say that such a thing is -still- too weak, in spite of the fact it'd almost certainly be right near the top of T3.

The Warblade is still a decent class anyway despite its weakness. The Fighter is a Tier 5. The only thing with the Fighter is to gain bonus feats. So the Fighter is hardly a good class let alone a decent class to stand on. :annoyed:

Kelb_Panthera

2020-09-02, 10:50 PM

The Warblade is still a decent class anyway despite its weakness. The Fighter is a Tier 5. The only thing with the Fighter is to gain bonus feats. So the Fighter is hardly a good class let alone a decent class to stand on. :annoyed:

I'll repeat this.

To be 100% clear, I don't intend this as an attack against the fighter, the war blade, or eunwoler. I -like- both classes and haven't interacted with the poster enough to form an opinion. I just get tired of seeing this gross misconception bandied about as if it were the gospel truth.

The fighter does, in fact have features beyond bonus feats. The linked resource has them all listed, including page references, along with the ACFs of all the other classes that have any.

I very frequently take resolute to shore up my fighters' will saves, for example.

Ignimortis

2020-09-02, 11:33 PM

Almost all of those are things 4e and 5e fighters either have access to natively or can easily get from items, and the ones that aren't are of questionable necessity. Do you really need ability damage? That's a stretch.

"Can get through items"

I'm so tired of that argument. Items are not a guarantee, people, they're not in your class abilities (unless you can explicitly craft them, and non-casters can't), and 5e specifically states that you're not in any shape or form guaranteed to have magic items. You might have to adventure 1 to 20 with a mundane greatsword, even though that would be grossly unfair to you. 3e guarantees SOME items (through WBL and random drops that are outlined in creature statblocks), and it presumes that you always get the number boosters you need to compete, but even 3e doesn't say that you can just buy or loot any item that you need outside of that, it all depends on the setting and the GM.

This always gets so grossly overstated.

That's pretty much true, but there's a simple reason for that. To get all of that on a Fighter, you'd need to try way harder than with a Warblade. Higher optimization floor does wonders for class perception, as well as some amount of ease of use - after all, getting a Standard Action strike to do as much damage as a Full Attack is easy, getting to Full Attack and move normally (not as a charge) at the same time takes a lot more effort.

Bartmanhomer

2020-09-03, 12:42 AM

I'll repeat this.

The fighter does, in fact have features beyond bonus feats. The linked resource has them all listed, including page references, along with the ACFs of all the other classes that have any.

I very frequently take resolute to shore up my fighters' will saves, for example.

Ok. I see your point there.

eunwoler

2020-09-03, 12:59 AM

This always gets so grossly overstated.

First let's address the iron heart surge elephant; it's such a poorly written maneuver that no two people will tell you the same thing when asked what it works against. It doesn't even create a necessary mechanical exception for shaking off a lot of the worst things you'd want to use it against since it doesn't lift the restrictions on needing to be able to move and act if you're paralyzed or petrified, for example. It does something but exactly what is so open to interpretation that it might just as well do nothing. Finally, it's a third level maneuver. Any character can pick it up at level 12 provided they sink one prior feat into another iron heart maneuver, including the fighter.

Moving along, the healing available to a warblade (iron heart endurance) is pathetic for the level it comes online. It's merely twice the character's level on a d12 class. That might be a fifth of his HPs and he can't even use it until he's below half. Since that's the only healing maneuver he has, at that, he can only do it every other round, provided nothing else makes it necessary to use that round's swift action like using a counter on the previous round or changing stances.

Saving throw options are only 4 options; three that allow you to replace one of your saves with a concentration check and one that lets you make an immediate reroll. These are all immediate actions and so cannot be used on the same round with any of the others.

Nerfs and buffs are actually pretty few and pretty minor. Pretty much all of them amount to ac and attack roll adjustments or damage boosters. One of the best of them for a certain type of build; bonecrusher on a crit-fishing tiger-claw specialist isn't even the equivalent of a 1st level paladin spell. It merely makes crits more likely, it doesn't guarantee them.

On the mobility front, the damage maneuvers make it so that you're less inefficient on rounds you want to move and attack instead of just standing and full attacking but the math washes out; you don't actually do more damage than you would with a full attack and you're now on all or nothing instead of the full attack's likely at least partial damage. Two diamond mind maneuvers actually improve mobility by allowing a charge with all it's down-sides removed (bounding assault) and both moving and full attacking (quicksilver motion).

Finally, the action economy difference is completely non-existent. Both the fighter and the warblade (and every other class for that matter) have options available to them for each action type. A whole host of fighter bonus feats involve making swift and immediate actions as well as specialized full round and standard actions that modify standard options.

When you then consider the fact that a warblade -can't- get all of these options because of having the fewest maneuvers known and readied of any martial adept, it looks a -whole- lot less impressive.

Then we consider the overlap; martial study and martial stance are fighter bonus feats and, unlike the warblade, the fighter isn't limited what discipline he can choose from. He is limited to only three maneuvers but can take as many stances as he's willing to spend feats on. His lower initiator level means he doesn't get them at the same time or as powerful a set of maneuvers as the warblade but a number of them are still quite good and scale just fine regardless of IL. Then there's the fact that a -lot- of warblade maneuvers are actually just reskinned feats from elsewhere in the game, many of which -are- fighter bonus feats.

And while you didn't mention it, I'll bring up the fact there are actually unique fighter features from ACFs. Have a resource: http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=8732.0 There's some nice overlap with warblade maneuvers in there for a fighter too.

Warblade and fighter are -way- closer to each other in capability than basically anyone gives them credit for. The warblade just has all his goodies in the one book. If the warblade is T3 then so is the fighter. Personally, I'd peg 'em both as high T4.

Now if you want to talk about a swordsage or especially a well built Master of Nine and say T3, I'm with you but not warblade. Crusader's closer but probably below that line too.

To be 100% clear, I don't intend this as an attack against the fighter, the warblade, or eunwoler. I -like- both classes and haven't interacted with the poster enough to form an opinion. I just get tired of seeing this gross misconception bandied about as if it were the gospel truth.

Now, on to the topic at hand.

Let's be 100% honest here. If you gave the fighter everything that people who give their opinions in these threads say he should have, what you'd end up with is monk, rogue, fighter, and warblade gestalted together with one of the evasions swapped for mettle, all of the afformentioned fighter ACFs without swapping them for bonus feats, the monk features' armor restriction removed, and probably abundant step and empty body removed. Probably throw in power attack and combat expertise as bonus feats without the prerequisites too, just to be sure.

Goes -way- past overkill in my mind but there are a -lot- of people that would still merrily say that such a thing is -still- too weak, in spite of the fact it'd almost certainly be right near the top of T3.

Hey those acfs are pretty good

Kelb_Panthera

2020-09-03, 01:47 AM

"Can get through items"

I'm so tired of that argument. Items are not a guarantee, people, they're not in your class abilities (unless you can explicitly craft them, and non-casters can't), and 5e specifically states that you're not in any shape or form guaranteed to have magic items. You might have to adventure 1 to 20 with a mundane greatsword, even though that would be grossly unfair to you. 3e guarantees SOME items (through WBL and random drops that are outlined in creature statblocks), and it presumes that you always get the number boosters you need to compete, but even 3e doesn't say that you can just buy or loot any item that you need outside of that, it all depends on the setting and the GM.

While it's not guaranteed, it is a baseline system expectation. A GM can change it, it's a fairly common change as I understand it. It amounts to about the same thing as "you are not guaranteed feats or spells," as those are also within the purview of the GM to change or dispense with.

As for your argument that it doesn't say that you can just buy any item you want, it actually does. DMG 137 under community wealth and population:

Every community has a gold piece limit... Anything having a price under that limit is most likely available, whether mundane or magical.

It may not be available right now, if you're in a small community, but a GM has to give you an explicit "no" for it to be wholly unavailable altogether. That or he has to structure the adventure to keep you away from civilization from beginning to end.

That's pretty much true, but there's a simple reason for that. To get all of that on a Fighter, you'd need to try way harder than with a Warblade. Higher optimization floor does wonders for class perception, as well as some amount of ease of use - after all, getting a Standard Action strike to do as much damage as a Full Attack is easy, getting to Full Attack and move normally (not as a charge) at the same time takes a lot more effort.

Ignoring magic item solutions, right out of ToB you can grab wolf-fang strike and sudden leap, albeit at the cost of two of your three hits of martial study. Combining bounding assault with any of the methods of getting pounce (and there are several feats for that) is effectively the same, although that will cost you two rounds of martial study as well. If there's any class that can spare a few feats for that sort of thing, it's the fighter.

Once you put the magic items back into play, the options blow wide open. Of course, that includes the crown of the white raven and co, making the above much easier on feats.

I won't deny that it is -somewhat- easier for a warblade to get an array of abilities but it's not that dramatic a difference.

And not to put too fine a point on it but why shouldn't pounce be adequate for -most- situations where you'd want to move and full attack? Straight lines aren't that tall a restriction and you -can- get around that without too much effort anyway.

Elves

2020-09-03, 01:48 AM

Kelb is completely right, non-dip warblade doesn't live up to its promise. Needs more known maneuvers and more mvs to choose from.

Kelb_Panthera

2020-09-03, 01:56 AM

Kelb is completely right, non-dip warblade doesn't live up to its promise. Needs more known maneuvers and more mvs to choose from.

That... wasn't quite my point...

If that's what you want, that's why swordsage is a thing and it's not too hard to get into Master of Nine on a warblade base either.

Edea

2020-09-03, 02:03 AM

Book Brawler ACF!

Lose: Fighter bonus feats (all)

Gain: Wizard spellcasting (full)

Ignimortis

2020-09-03, 02:35 AM

*snip*

You're not guaranteed items. You can buy items, but not any of them (even metropoli have a limit smaller than some items, and a game where small cities and smaller settlements are the norm will have a lot of issues with buying higher-level items at all). And your resources aren't just a pile of gold coins - WBL isn't about that, you can easily have a lot of your WBL be taken up by the big six items that just drop consistently, while any utility or large amounts of gold are rarely present.

That... wasn't quite my point...

If that's what you want, that's why swordsage is a thing and it's not too hard to get into Master of Nine on a warblade base either.

To be fair, that does have some merits. Quite a bit of Warblade's progression is somewhat weird, and updating it to something more akin to PoW standards would be great.

Book Brawler ACF!

Lose: Fighter bonus feats (all)

Gain: Wizard spellcasting (full)

Some people would still argue that Wizard's better, because hey, free metamagic feats!

Kelb_Panthera

2020-09-03, 04:44 AM

You're not guaranteed items. You can buy items, but not any of them (even metropoli have a limit smaller than some items, and a game where small cities and smaller settlements are the norm will have a lot of issues with buying higher-level items at all). And your resources aren't just a pile of gold coins - WBL isn't about that, you can easily have a lot of your WBL be taken up by the big six items that just drop consistently, while any utility or large amounts of gold are rarely present.

You are guaranteed items unless the GM either goes well out of his way to ensure you only ever encounter mindless beasts and never see a town bigger than a hamlet or just outright ignores the rules and guidelines as they were laid out for him in the DMG and that the game is built around. Most creatures have the standard treasure, when generated those treasures will exceed WBL, and large towns have both gobs of liquid cash to buy the excess and unwanted treasures and valuable magical items for sale as long as they're below the GP limit.

A metropolis' GP limit is 100k. That covers a -lot- of ground. In fact, the MIC guidelines suggest it should cover anything you need right up to level 18, minimum. Speaking of MIC, it adds one more row to the table; planar metropolis, that has a GP limit of 600k. A city of that size would certainly be uncommon but it would also be known across the continent.

Finally, being at the expected levels on the big 6 starts leaving you with extra by level 10. If you let them slide, just a little, you can start picking up extras even before then.

To be fair, that does have some merits. Quite a bit of Warblade's progression is somewhat weird, and updating it to something more akin to PoW standards would be great.

That's not what he said though. He said it needed to be more not just restructured. I'm not familiar with PoW so I can't comment on the differences.

Some people would still argue that Wizard's better, because hey, free metamagic feats!

Ain't that the truth.

Morty

2020-09-03, 05:16 AM

eunwoler

2020-09-03, 05:50 AM

Every time someone tries to fulfill the dream of making fighters better while "keeping their identity", what happens is that they get features piled on them that eclipse that of any other non-casting class. Arguably even casting classes, because they share spell-casting rules and many spells.

But all those dream-fighters? Skill points, new feats, delectable feats, selective features... it always becomes some kind of horribly unwieldy point-buy character disguised as a class. Even without putting primary spellcasters into the equation, fighters cover more concepts than barbarians, paladins, rangers, monks and bards put together. The fighter class and its identity aren't worth keeping, because it's so generic that it either doesn't mean anything or becomes a grab-bag.

The 5E fighter is the best fighter there can be, because "generic beatstick that deals damage and doesn't take up too much time to build and play" is the height of the concept's potential. If you want warrior characters who don't play second fiddle to spellcasters, the fighter won't work. Nor will the other "martial" classes, to be entirely fair.

Its impossible to make a class equal to a spellcaster if it doesn't cast some kind of spell refluffed or otherwise. Hundreds of feats or dozens of overbloated ones would be needed to make something a tier 1. Obviously we're going for something more along the lines of a tier 3 here

IMO if there were combat feats that scaled with fighter level and/or BAB at the very least a consistently tier 4 fighter could be made, although somehow the class would have to be cheesed to make it tier 3 with use outside of combat

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-03, 06:10 AM

You're not guaranteed items. You can buy items, but not any of them (even metropoli have a limit smaller than some items, and a game where small cities and smaller settlements are the norm will have a lot of issues with buying higher-level items at all). And your resources aren't just a pile of gold coins - WBL isn't about that, you can easily have a lot of your WBL be taken up by the big six items that just drop consistently, while any utility or large amounts of gold are rarely present.

Honestly, even if you give the Fighter full WBL in whatever he wants, he needs to spend it all to get level-appropriate numbers. Kelb's notion that you can solve the class's problems with WBL is the sort of thing you think when you haven't run the numbers.

Some people would still argue that Wizard's better, because hey, free metamagic feats!

And Familiar. It probably is, to be honest. A slightly bigger hit die and full BAB isn't worth the bonus feats, especially since you're PrCing out at 5th anyway, when it's two bonus feats for +3 BAB.

Nor will the other "martial" classes, to be entirely fair.

That's not really true. The Paladin and the Ranger are casters already. Every core Rogue PrC gives them some magic powers. The Monk's kung fu could easily upgrade into full Wuxia or Xianxia power levels if it didn't suck a whole bunch. Barbarian is the obvious class to turn into Hulk or Thor. Pretty much every martial class but Fighter could work at high levels, the issue is really that "Fighter" is a uniquely garbage concept.

JyP

2020-09-03, 08:06 AM

There's no reason why we need to have a "Fighter" class at all. The name is, as you note, pointlessly limiting. Everyone fights, and the nature of the game is that they should be assumed to do so at a reasonably equal level of efficiency.
Here is the crux of the problem for me in fact :
- on the one hand, fighter class is seen as subpar because everyone fights
- on the other hand, it means that conceptually fighting won long ago : even wizards or clerics gain arcane powers from brawling/slashing/killing, which is completely antithetical for them.

if we want to be correct from a thematical point of view :
- one gains fighting experience through training and real fighting
- one gains stealing experience through training and real burglaries
- one gains arcane experience through arcane tomes study & esoteric training
- one gains spiritual / divine experience through examplary conduct, charisma and proselytism

so a simple solution would be :

- no more BAB, Fortitude, Reflex, Hit Points progression for non-fighting classes.

As for the fighter class itself, its main good point is polyvalence : who can fight in a tavern brawl, in tunnels during a siege, in the dark, in duels, during a skirmish, in a pitched battle ? Only fighters. And a typical campaign should see all these situations, especially pitched battles - where only the fighter can wear heavy armor easily.

Doctor Despair

2020-09-03, 08:09 AM

so a simple solution would be :

- no more BAB, Fortitude, Reflex, Hit Points progression for non-fighting classes.

So you'd suggest the fighter is both more agile than the rogue and more hearty than the barbarian?

Xervous

2020-09-03, 08:18 AM

Here is the crux of the problem for me in fact :
- on the one hand, fighter class is seen as subpar because everyone fights
- on the other hand, it means that conceptually fighting won long ago : even wizards or clerics gain arcane powers from brawling/slashing/killing, which is completely antithetical for them.

if we want to be correct from a thematical point of view :
- one gains fighting experience through training and real fighting
- one gains stealing experience through training and real burglaries
- one gains arcane experience through arcane tomes study & esoteric training
- one gains spiritual / divine experience through examplary conduct, charisma and proselytism

so a simple solution would be :

- no more BAB, Fortitude, Reflex, Hit Points progression for non-fighting classes.

As for the fighter class itself, its main good point is polyvalence : who can fight in a tavern brawl, in tunnels during a siege, in the dark, in duels, during a skirmish, in a pitched battle ? Only fighters. And a typical campaign should see all these situations, especially pitched battles - where only the fighter can wear heavy armor easily.

Looking to Shadowrun’s hackers provides a good idea of what the outcome would be. If you gate other archetypes from combat and keep the rules as detailed as they are the motivation will be there for other players to order pizza while the fighter slogs through combat. Simplify combat down to the complexity of skill check resolution and you’re still left with the desire for XP driving players in different directions for their own purposes unless you consistently manufacture adventure hooks that promise the full checklist.

JyP

2020-09-03, 08:28 AM

So you'd suggest the fighter is both more agile than the rogue and more hearty than the barbarian?
No, most barbarian class features are geared toward fighting, so I see it as a fighting class. It's why I talked about "fighting classes", there are many D&D classes geared toward fighting, typically classes with full BAB progression (but see below).

Rogue seems to be part skills, part deception, part duellist, part assassin. And while I can find legendary fighters in a lot of legends or history, it's not so easy to find someone which is both a legendary thief and a legendary duellist.

It's why I would tend to keep fighting to fighters and combat oriented classes : clerics, wizards, thieves should remain sitting ducks in combat situations, as the fighter is a sitting duck in arcane / divine / thieving situations. Or theses non fighting classes should dip in fighter :smallbiggrin:

gijoemike

2020-09-03, 08:57 AM

I want to toss my 2 cents into this discussion. When I think of what a fighter should be I think of a soldier, a man-at-arms, captain of the guard, a tactical expert, an expert fencer, or master of Lighting Sword technique. At higher levels I expect a fighter to lead in combat, setting up the enemy so the mage gets his spell off, the rogue gets his sneak attack, he/she bolsters the abilities of everyone else. A fighter has some clue as to what the enemy is doing, or what they can do.

As a fighter who fights in a magical word I fight dragons, wizards, witches, undead. I understand some of the dangers and how to hurt them or at least drive them off. They shouldn't be clueless to the dangers of the world they live in. Armies of undead are a thing.

As a captain of the guard/watch or a soldier in an army the fighter should be able to convince the quartermaster I need one extra alchemist fire, that Bob can hold the wall, that Steve messed up but that is why we train "Do better trooper." There needs to be some form of diplomacy or bluff in the class. A fighter normally doesn't work alone at all times.

But the fighter class doesn't give us any of that. With bullrush/pull/reposition one can get a tiny bit of the set up mentioned above. But the class has no tactical knowledge, no shield wall powers, no understanding of the enemy, military, history, magic, undead. A fighter class goes into every fight practically blind. And why cant a fighter deal with other people in any rational way? Only 2 skill pts and no knowledge/bluff/sense motive/diplomacy?

In my opinion, the closest fix to fighter was the book of nine swords. Not because fighters now have magic (the main point against the book), but because the man at arms/fighter type has fighting stances and special techniques that can catch an opponent off guard. "Ah, I see you studied the techniques of diamond mind. Your stance is classic self punishing, leaving yourself open to commit your mind to offense." Simple stances and strikes add so much flavor and set up ability for the fighter. It is fantastic.

Knowledge devotion is understanding your enemy. Which was given to clerics instead of fighters. If said fighter has fought undead before, then said fighter could learn how to hurt a shadow, ghoul, ghost, or ghast. Similar to Monks there should come a point where a specialty fighter can treat a weapon/class of weapons they pick up as magical. They just know and anticipate the tricks of a dragon, wyvern, elemental and have learned via combat experience how to handle it.

But what I have described is nothing like a fighter at all as it is presented in the PHB. It is either go warblade as others have suggested. Or some combo of bard ( skills, buffing others, knowledge) or monk ( I AM THE WEAPON, actual basic training in how to fight). All of these fall short.

JyP

2020-09-03, 10:07 AM

Looking to ShadowrunÂ’s hackers provides a good idea of what the outcome would be. If you gate other archetypes from combat and keep the rules as detailed as they are the motivation will be there for other players to order pizza while the fighter slogs through combat. Simplify combat down to the complexity of skill check resolution and youÂ’re still left with the desire for XP driving players in different directions for their own purposes unless you consistently manufacture adventure hooks that promise the full checklist.
Any adventure should provide scenes for each PC to take the main spot, whether its class is fighter / wizard / cleric or thief. Shadowrun is infamous for its subsystem for hackers, and Reve de Dragon for needing 30 minutes for each caster to cast a spell, I agree we don't need to go so far :smallbiggrin:

On the other hand, an experienced adventurer should be able to dabble on each role as required : a novice fighter won't know how to detect arcane, a novice thief won't know anything about divine, a novice wizard won't know how to brawl or duck, a novice cleric won't know how to sneak.

D&D 3 simplified experience as something gained through fighting monsters, and focused a lot on fighting - each class is able to contribute significantly in combat - which disadvantages archetypal fighters. This seems to me to be a design choice, as waiting for novice wizards / clerics / thieves to contribute in combat was seen as downtime or significant risk for matching players in previous editions.

Another solution would be to allow each class to contribute a bit in all situations - combat / divine / arcane / thieving. As any class can currently contribute in combat. Maybe magicians need arcane energy from other PCs to cast spells, clerics need to pray with other PCs also, thieves need someone to distract foes, and fighters can already count on other murderhobos PCs.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-03, 11:09 AM

if we want to be correct from a thematical point of view

What does it mean to be correct from a "thematic point of view"? There's not a correct flavor or a correct set of themes for your game to have. You certainly could imagine that people improve their skills by fighting, but you could also imagine that they improve their skills by dark pacts with demon lords, or by totally arbitrary breathing exercises.

no more BAB, Fortitude, Reflex, Hit Points progression for non-fighting classes.

That is certainly a simple solution. I just question what other virtues it possesses that would justify choosing it over different solutions like "the Fighter gets level-appropriate abilities instead of not doing that".

Doctor Despair

2020-09-03, 01:07 PM

Xervous

2020-09-03, 01:43 PM

Okay... to elevate the fighter to at least the rogue's level of ability, what if we gave the fighter a feat at every level (edit: and took off the "fighter feat" restriction, so long as they meet the prereqs), and also gave it the rogue's class skill list (in addition to the fighter's list) and rogue skillpoints? You miss out on some class features, but the double feats might offer enough build versatility to make it T3 at least, right? And without sacrificing its fighter-ness?

What exactly is its fighter-ness?

All classes should get level appropriate means for engaging with given challenges. First we set the definition of what each level range might expect of characters, then we look at classes. If the concept of fighter isn’t valid across all levels it’s simply not a working concept.

Troacctid

2020-09-03, 02:02 PM

Its impossible to make a class equal to a spellcaster if it doesn't cast some kind of spell refluffed or otherwise. Hundreds of feats or dozens of overbloated ones would be needed to make something a tier 1. Obviously we're going for something more along the lines of a tier 3 here
Are we forgetting that spellcasters exist in almost every tier?

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-03, 02:44 PM

The clearly implied meaning of "spellcaster" in that context is the high leveled ones that people talk about in the context of balance problems, not the Healers and Adepts of the world. "Well ackshually"-ing them for using slightly imprecise language everyone understands is not productive.

All classes should get level appropriate means for engaging with given challenges. First we set the definition of what each level range might expect of characters, then we look at classes. If the concept of fighter isn’t valid across all levels it’s simply not a working concept.

Exactly. Before you can make a level-appropriate Fighter, you have to define what it means to be level-appropriate and what counts as a Fighter.

JyP

2020-09-03, 02:59 PM

What does it mean to be correct from a "thematic point of view"? There's not a correct flavor or a correct set of themes for your game to have. You certainly could imagine that people improve their skills by fighting, but you could also imagine that they improve their skills by dark pacts with demon lords, or by totally arbitrary breathing exercises.
I agree, but the point is that D&D 3 is focused on fighting. Diplomancers or Vow of Non Violence are not typical in D&D 3 games, nor esoteric pursuit.

If we used Ars Magica rules :
- Wizards would gain magic experience by studying magic tomes and virtus, which takes one season to do. Any interruption or adventure would result in less magic experience, hence wizard's tendancy to be in their lab and never wanting to interact with mundanes. Being from a noble family or having a mentor are counted as penalties in the system - because these are hooks through which the DM can extract you from your lab.
- Fighters would enhance their fighting skills from training, practice, with a lot less risks than battles or adventures which can maim you for life.

Or with older D&D editions, you gained XP according to how much loot / gold you got from dungeons spelunking (which is more in line with rogues).

D&D 3 campaigns tend to not focus a lot on why PC adventurers gain levels so quickly compared to NPCs - but you can nonetheless have clerics or wizards NPC who never got involved in combat nor dungeons, even if it's not on par with typical D&D adventures.

Bartmanhomer

2020-09-03, 03:35 PM

Well in Pathfinder, Paizo did improve the Fighter class to make it competent and useful.

JyP

2020-09-03, 03:39 PM

no more BAB, Fortitude, Reflex, Hit Points progression for non-fighting classes.
That is certainly a simple solution. I just question what other virtues it possesses that would justify choosing it over different solutions like "the Fighter gets level-appropriate abilities instead of not doing that".
All non fighting classes would be way more wary of combat situations, as one hit is sufficient to down them in combat. So they would focus more on their strong suit : sneaking for thieves, divine and arcane knowledges for clerics & wizards.

note that it raises interesting questions : to pass through a monster, you can :
- do a combat, and reduce its hit points to zero (defaut D&D 3 solution, fighter)
- try to sneak past it (thief)
- try to convert it to your point of view (cleric)
- try to mesmerize it with your magic (wizard)

or a combination of all of the above, as monsters would have weaknesses to specific strategies but be strong against others - so all PCs would shine.

The main issue with an approach where fighters are even more able in combat is that non fighting classes are already too much proficient in combat, from my point of view :smallwink:

Troacctid

2020-09-03, 03:56 PM

The clearly implied meaning of "spellcaster" in that context is the high leveled ones that people talk about in the context of balance problems, not the Healers and Adepts of the world. "Well ackshually"-ing them for using slightly imprecise language everyone understands is not productive.
On the contrary, I think it's very important to understand why, when, and how spellcasters are powerful if you want to make a version of fighter, barbarian, monk, or paladin that can proudly stand next to them. You should also understand why, when, and how different classes in the same category are more or less powerful than one another.

Edea

2020-09-03, 03:56 PM

Are we forgetting that spellcasters exist in almost every tier?

This.

Problem in 3.5's not the Fighter co-existing with magic. Problem's the spellcaster chassis sets we got and the magic item creation rules.

Anything with effective 9th level spell access that's not on a strict 'cast-only-from-this-curated-list' setup needs to be gutted and re-worked from the ground up. Wizard is at least 8 different classes rolled into one, to say nothing of Cleric or Druid, and the Artificer is just asinine.

Also, SAD casting needs to go. You need Int to understand a spell, Con to survive casting it, and Cha to figure out spell parameters (save DC/etc) once you've used it. Bonus spell slots are removed, obvs..

Elves

2020-09-03, 04:15 PM

You need Int to understand a spell, Con to survive casting it, and Cha to figure out spell parameters (save DC/etc) once you've used it.

Sounds pretty hellish. Why not just nerf whatever needs to be nerfed instead of nerfing by proxy through MAD? There's a conversation to be had about what role class stat reliances should play, but SAD is more a symptom than a problem. (In one view, the main role of class stat reliances is to create differences between characters of different classes rather than to create tactical choices within the class about stat allotment, although that brings the question of why not bake those differences into the classes.)

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-03, 04:37 PM

All non fighting classes would be way more wary of combat situations, as one hit is sufficient to down them in combat. So they would focus more on their strong suit : sneaking for thieves, divine and arcane knowledges for clerics & wizards.

Sure, that is an effect of the change. Why is that effect (the segregation of gameplay into non-overlapping spheres of influence for different classes) desirable? Why not allow everyone to participate in the same activities and be reasonably effective at them instead?

or a combination of all of the above, as monsters would have weaknesses to specific strategies but be strong against others - so all PCs would shine.

This already happens. Different monsters and different classes have different abilities and there are different strategies that are more or less viable in particular circumstances.

On the contrary, I think it's very important to understand why, when, and how spellcasters are powerful if you want to make a version of fighter, barbarian, monk, or paladin that can proudly stand next to them. You should also understand why, when, and how different classes in the same category are more or less powerful than one another.

Then say that. Explain your point. In more detail than you have here, even. If you think the existence of the Healer or the Adept is a relevant concern, explain why proactively rather than making comments that don't add anything to the discussion.

Problem in 3.5's not the Fighter co-existing with magic. Problem's the spellcaster chassis sets we got and the magic item creation rules.

That's not really true. The problem is imbalance, and that imbalance is as much a result of the Fighter being bad as the casters being good. Certainly, you could nerf casters. But the reality is that even if you think the Wizard has too much utility by a factor of four (which is the largest for which an argument can reasonably be made), a balanced Wizard still has more utility abilities than any class that doesn't cast spells. You have to buff the Fighter. There's no solution that doesn't do it.

Anything with effective 9th level spell access that's not on a strict 'cast-only-from-this-curated-list' setup needs to be gutted and re-worked from the ground up. Wizard is at least 8 different classes rolled into one, to say nothing of Cleric or Druid, and the Artificer is just asinine.

So what? It doesn't matter what the class does, it matters what characters do. And you can make characters that are Beguilers or Dread Necromancers that compete with the Wizard. If those classes weren't arbitrarily gimped in various ways it'd be even easier.

Also, SAD casting needs to go. You need Int to understand a spell, Con to survive casting it, and Cha to figure out spell parameters (save DC/etc) once you've used it. Bonus spell slots are removed, obvs..

That does not seem at all obvious or necessary to me. What problem are you solving by making every character MAD?

Edea

2020-09-03, 04:57 PM

And you can make characters that are Beguilers or Dread Necromancers that compete with the Wizard.

Not at the same level of RAW optimization, not even close. If a fixed-list caster's getting anywhere near a Wizard, either the Wizard's build is twenty kinds of messed up or you're bringing adjudication into the mix to try and curb them with applications of rule 0 (such as artificially restricting scroll/spellbook access).

Also that does not make every character MAD, it makes casting spells MAD, which is how it should've been in the first place. Clerics, Druids and Wizards all only care about one stat, and then just dump the leftovers into Con. That is a problem.

Elves

2020-09-03, 05:58 PM

wizards are int>dex=con with dex sometimes better because of initiative and RTAs. Why is that a problem? it's the classes who can't function at lower point buys that are usually considered dysfunctional.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-03, 06:07 PM

smetzger

2020-09-03, 08:44 PM

My fix is to make Fighters more flexible. They are the generic Fighter so make them more customizable.

They get an additional 2 skill points per level and can choose any 2 additional skills as class skills.
You can choose any feat as a fighter bonus feat.
When going up a level you can swap out an existing feat for a new feat. If you swap out a feat that is a pre-req for a feat that you have. You do not lose your access to that feat. For example you have Cleave and Great Cleave and you go up a level. You decide to swap out Cleave for a different feat, you do not give up your ability to Great Cleave.

Some other changes. Skill Feats (choose any two skills and get +2 in each, they also become class skills)

These work for me. Sure, not a complete overhaul, but I think it provides some incentive to choose Fighter over Barbarian.

Ignimortis

2020-09-03, 08:46 PM

Not at the same level of RAW optimization, not even close. If a fixed-list caster's getting anywhere near a Wizard, either the Wizard's build is twenty kinds of messed up or you're bringing adjudication into the mix to try and curb them with applications of rule 0 (such as artificially restricting scroll/spellbook access).

Also that does not make every character MAD, it makes casting spells MAD, which is how it should've been in the first place. Clerics, Druids and Wizards all only care about one stat, and then just dump the leftovers into Con. That is a problem.

Casting spells also might take DEX to hit with touch spells, and CON to actually be able to take a hit once in a while. No actual class is actually SAD, some just rely on one ability more, but basically everyone needs some DEX and some CON. Making every caster rely on three stats before we even consider other ways of fixing them would be kinda unfair - after all, you don't base melee attack to-hit on DEX, damage on STR and staving off exertion (which isn't a thing, but neither is CON to survive spellcasting) on CON.

Pretty much every good class is dependent on CON (to survive being hit) and two other stats, which is good. It's MAD when we go to four stats for a lot of things, and five or six are almost unplayable.

That being said, I do think that spellcasters need to be conceptually restricted on the level of Beguiler and Warmage. I can see how to do it for Clerics and Druids too, I have trouble imagining a Wizard that wouldn't create uproar from Wizard players while being balanced.

Kelb_Panthera

2020-09-03, 09:26 PM

Honestly, even if you give the Fighter full WBL in whatever he wants, he needs to spend it all to get level-appropriate numbers. Kelb's notion that you can solve the class's problems with WBL is the sort of thing you think when you haven't run the numbers.

See, I'd argue that you have to have failed to run the numbers to reach your position.

So how about we just run them and settle it. I asserted level 10 as the point you start getting extra by system guidelines. IIRC, the "big six" are weapon, armor, ability booster, cloak of resistance, ring of protection, and amulet of natural armor. A level 10 item is worth 6500 or less by MIC guidelines.

That's a +1 weapon, a +2 belt of giant's strength, a +1 ring of protection, a +1 necklace, a +2 cloak of resistance. For 2300, 4000, 2000, 2000, & 4000 for a total of 14,300 on the stuff with fairly fixed value. We'll circle back around to armor and shield in just a minute.

Well then you have to ask, what are the target numbers? We can derive them from the NPC guidelines for CR and cross reference the target numbers for creating a creature in the MM.

A level 10 fighter should have an attack bonus of about 17 and an AC of about 23, by those guidelines.

If we start at str 15, add 2 for level up bonuses, and 2 more for that belt then we're at str 19 for a +4, +1 from the weapon's enhancement, and +10 for BAB to get us +15 to-hit before we select any feats or adjust abilities with a racial choice, a lucky roll, or more points on the buy. Let's be deliberately sub-optimal and go half-orc and weapon focus to be on target.

Now we're at AC; let's go ahead and make the obvious choice and put him in plate with dex 12. With the other items in question, we're at 21. We can get to 23 in a couple ways; a heavy shield, enhance the armor to +2, +1 buckler, etc and so on. Let's go with a simple heavy shield to save money. That's an extra 1800, bringing the total up to 16,110.

Saves look like +11 fort (con 14), +6 ref, and +5 will. These are, admittedly, below target for the CR guidelines but classed humanoids just plain don't meet those targets. A quick check of CR 10 monsters from the MM puts save DC's around 20. That's about even on the fort save and still around 1/4 of ref and will saves being made. A similarly optimized cleric's +14 will save isn't all that much better.

So at 16,110 out of 49,000 gp worth of wealth by level, you're reaching system targets. You -could- increase those numbers by spending substantially more cash but the only one you could seriously boost from here is AC by shuffling some things to be much more optimal. Better choices of race, multiclassing, and clever use of the remaining TWO-THIRDS of your wealth can do a lot toward making those numbers more effective as well as larger.

Now, the same guidelines that give us that 6500 cap acutally do say that it's not wholly inappropriate to reach past your current level by two clicks. That puts us up to 10k.

+2 weapon, +2 ability booster, +2 necklace, +2 ring, and +3 cloak comes to 8300, 4000, 8000, 8000, and 9000 or a total of 37,300. If we stick with the plate at +1 we're right back to target AC and that's 2,650 to the total for 39,950 out of 49,000. That's just shy of 10k to do what you will if you're, frankly, overspending on just +numbers stuff.

The above is -not- an optimized character. Not at all. Better spending, better race choice, and better ability distribution can all make a character that much better than this baseline loadout.

Since this is now looking like I was being overly conservative in estimating level 10, let's back that up to 7.

The guidelines put us at 3k for level appropriate.

+1 weapon, no ability booster, +1 ring, +1 amulet, +1 cloak makes 2300, 0, 2000, 2000, and 1000 for a total of 7300 out of 19000. To-hit target is 12 so that's bab 7, +3 str (16), +1 weapon and we're one point short. AC target is 20 so we need 8 more points so putting him in plate nails the target for another 1650 making 8950. Funny how that's still not even half of WBL, innit?

Let's go ahead and bump up to the 5k limit of level 9 items.

+1 weapon, +2 ability booster, +1 ring, +1 amulet, +2 cloak at 2300, 4000, 2000, 2000, and 4000; that's 14,300 again and the plate puts us up to 15,950 which still leaves you a touch over 3k for something else. Now that's a tight enough figure that you might call it too little to matter with magical gear that doesn't require either casting ability or UMD. Although that -is- a novice crown of the white raven.

Now that it's here for everyone to see, I'm revising my previous statement. You don't start getting enough gold to expand outside your class at 10. You get it somwhere between 7 and 8 on a conservative estimate.

And Familiar. It probably is, to be honest. A slightly bigger hit die and full BAB isn't worth the bonus feats, especially since you're PrCing out at 5th anyway, when it's two bonus feats for +3 BAB.

There's a point proven. :smallamused:

Troacctid

2020-09-03, 09:55 PM

Then say that. Explain your point. In more detail than you have here, even. If you think the existence of the Healer or the Adept is a relevant concern, explain why proactively rather than making comments that don't add anything to the discussion.
I did a whole thread about when, how, and why each class is in its tier, including a section about the limits of the tier system. https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?600635-Why-each-class-is-in-its-tier-2019-update!

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-03, 10:41 PM

Pretty much every good class is dependent on CON (to survive being hit) and two other stats, which is good. It's MAD when we go to four stats for a lot of things, and five or six are almost unplayable.

I would argue that this is actually a reason to eliminate Constitution, as a stat that always gets whatever the highest number you can afford while buying all your other stats is does not create interesting decisions. Moreover, I would argue that SAD tends to produce more interesting characters for two reasons. First, because there's only one stat you really care about, you end up with enough free points to customize your character. Second, having correlations between classes and stats allows you to build secondary effects. If Paladins have high Strength and Wisdom and Rogues have high Intelligence and Dexterity, then you can add skills or other things that help build identity for those classes by keying off the same attributes.

That being said, I do think that spellcasters need to be conceptually restricted on the level of Beguiler and Warmage. I can see how to do it for Clerics and Druids too, I have trouble imagining a Wizard that wouldn't create uproar from Wizard players while being balanced.

What exactly is conceptually restricted about the Beguiler? He has the concept of "mind control", which implicitly grants access to every other concept. And more broadly, that kind of limitation isn't a real limitation at all. The Dread Necromancer is limited to Necromancy, but Necromancy includes everything from mind control (Magic Jar) to blasting (Mass Inflict Wounds) to debuffs (Waves of Fatigue) to minionmancy (Animate Dead). A hypothetical Conjurer or Transmuter would be even less limited.

But I would also disagree with the latter half of the claim. It's obviously possible to balance the Wizard. It's balanced (in the same rough sense that any two 3e classes are balanced) with classes like the Artificer, Archivist, Cleric, or Druid. You may not like that balance point, but it does exist, and I think it's dishonest to assert that the balance points you happen to favor are the only ones that count as balanced.

All that said, I don't even agree that Wizard fans wouldn't accept Wizards that did less stuff. I'd be perfectly happy if the Wizard only got AoE blasting (Fireball), AoE crowd control (Stinking Cloud), summons (Summon Monster), and a smaller selection of iconic spells like Magic Missile or Dimension Door. My opposition to "nerf the Wizard" as a primary approach isn't that I think the current Wizard is the only acceptable one, but that such an approach fails to acknowledge that the problems caused by classes that need buffs are far, far more dire. The Wizard might get too many utility effects. The Fighter gets zero. Looking at that paradigm and saying "clearly what we need to fix here is the Wizard" seems very, very likely to result in a game like 4e where no one gets meaningful utility effects than one that I would actually be interested in playing. We tried nerfing the Wizard into the ground. It nearly killed D&D. Maybe we can try something else instead?

That's a +1 weapon, a +2 belt of giant's strength, a +1 ring of protection, a +1 necklace, a +2 cloak of resistance. For 2300, 4000, 2000, 2000, & 4000 for a total of 14,300 on the stuff with fairly fixed value. We'll circle back around to armor and shield in just a minute.

That's not level-appropriate gear for a 10th level Fighter. All those bonuses are too low, and you're not buying armor or a ranged weapon. Also it's not clear what necklace you're buying, but if your plan is an amulet of natural armor over an amulet of health, that's an issue too.

I mean, really. The Wizard can make a weapon +2 for the cost of a 3rd level spell slot, except it doesn't even cost that, because the spell lasts long enough for you to re-prepare your spells before it expires. If your plan is to spend money on a weapon with a smaller bonus than that, I don't care if it fits the MIC guidelines, it's clearly inadequate in the face of the realities of the system.

A level 10 fighter should have an attack bonus of about 17 and an AC of about 23, by those guidelines.

That's not the place you need to look. Take a look at the monsters. At 10th level, your frontliner needs to go toe-to-toe with a Fire Giant (https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Fire_Giant). That hits AC 23 on a 3. Good luck winning that fight, especially as a sword and board Fighter. Even caster monsters like the Couatl are hitting you about half the time. You might be able to hit this standard, but I don't care if you do, because it's not a standard that results in meaningful contributions being made to party goals like "killing monsters" or "not dying".

I did a whole thread about when, how, and why each class is in its tier, including a section about the limits of the tier system. https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?600635-Why-each-class-is-in-its-tier-2019-update!

Can you maybe see how "read this whole other thread" is not a super useful or compelling argument to people? You're still not making specific points people can engage with. You can't reasonably expect people to go figure out what argument you are trying to make based on the existence of Healers and Adepts, rebut it, and wait to see if they guessed right. You need to present that argument in this thread, in terms that are detailed enough for people to engage with.

Ignimortis

2020-09-03, 11:01 PM

I would argue that this is actually a reason to eliminate Constitution, as a stat that always gets whatever the highest number you can afford while buying all your other stats is does not create interesting decisions. Moreover, I would argue that SAD tends to produce more interesting characters for two reasons. First, because there's only one stat you really care about, you end up with enough free points to customize your character. Second, having correlations between classes and stats allows you to build secondary effects. If Paladins have high Strength and Wisdom and Rogues have high Intelligence and Dexterity, then you can add skills or other things that help build identity for those classes by keying off the same attributes.

This is an interesting idea, but then there should be some sort of support for really tough characters, which isn't limited by class. Toughness and Improved Toughness and whatever don't really function as such, so there should be something better — but not good enough for everyone to take it as a priority.

What exactly is conceptually restricted about the Beguiler? He has the concept of "mind control", which implicitly grants access to every other concept. And more broadly, that kind of limitation isn't a real limitation at all. The Dread Necromancer is limited to Necromancy, but Necromancy includes everything from mind control (Magic Jar) to blasting (Mass Inflict Wounds) to debuffs (Waves of Fatigue) to minionmancy (Animate Dead). A hypothetical Conjurer or Transmuter would be even less limited.

The issue is with abilities that grant you access to other abilities, not the exact concept of "mind mage". You can structure mind magic in a way that disallows using other creatures' special abilities, but I see how someone might dislike that. If you have a solution for that that doesn't involve cutting down every monster and NPC ability.

And about every single magic school in D&D includes a bit (or way) too much for its' definition, because there are about three thousand spells divided between 8 schools. Of course you're gonna have an overflow.

But I would also disagree with the latter half of the claim. It's obviously possible to balance the Wizard. It's balanced (in the same rough sense that any two 3e classes are balanced) with classes like the Artificer, Archivist, Cleric, or Druid. You may not like that balance point, but it does exist, and I think it's dishonest to assert that the balance points you happen to favor are the only ones that count as balanced.

I will precede "balanced" with "IMO" each time it's relevant, if you wish. It's a nitpick in the same vein as "what spellcasters do you mean, Wizard or Adept?".

All that said, I don't even agree that Wizard fans wouldn't accept Wizards that did less stuff. I'd be perfectly happy if the Wizard only got AoE blasting (Fireball), AoE crowd control (Stinking Cloud), summons (Summon Monster), and a smaller selection of iconic spells like Magic Missile or Dimension Door. My opposition to "nerf the Wizard" as a primary approach isn't that I think the current Wizard is the only acceptable one, but that such an approach fails to acknowledge that the problems caused by classes that need buffs are far, far more dire. The Wizard might get too many utility effects. The Fighter gets zero. Looking at that paradigm and saying "clearly what we need to fix here is the Wizard" seems very, very likely to result in a game like 4e where no one gets meaningful utility effects than one that I would actually be interested in playing. We tried nerfing the Wizard into the ground. It nearly killed D&D. Maybe we can try something else instead?

I was always arguing for going halfway. Wizard gets some utility, Fighter gets some utility. Of course, an increase "from zero to some" is far greater in scope than "lots to some", but I also don't think anyone should be a full 3e druid/cleric/wizard (sorcerer, if you include stupid stuff like runestaves and other methods of vastly increasing their spells known) (all relevant spells included in that definition as available to be picked).

Edea

2020-09-03, 11:17 PM

I mean, I'm not saying I dislike 3.5 wizards. Quite the opposite, it's my favorite class due to how much nonsense I'm able to pull with it.

But then when I think back on that, and just how much it would take to get me to really start considering other options, I realize that casters in that edition needed the nerf bat -badly-.

The closest thing I ever played to a martial character in that edition was a swordsage spec'd in Shadow Hand...and of course, a DMM cleric with the War domain.

JyP

2020-09-04, 01:40 AM

Yahzi Coyote

2020-09-04, 01:57 AM

Do you have a pretty sweet homebrew you'd want to post up?
29 pts for attributes (while wizards/clerics get 21), all good saves, a bonus feat every level, 4 skill pts per level, and leadership for free at 5th.

In my world no one ever realistically gets above 11th level (the campaign is 2 years old and they just hit 5th) so hopefully that's enough.

JyP

2020-09-04, 02:09 AM

A level 10 fighter should have an attack bonus of about 17 and an AC of about 23, by those guidelines.
That's not the place you need to look. Take a look at the monsters. At 10th level, your frontliner needs to go toe-to-toe with a Fire Giant (https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Fire_Giant). That hits AC 23 on a 3. Good luck winning that fight, especially as a sword and board Fighter. Even caster monsters like the Couatl are hitting you about half the time. You might be able to hit this standard, but I don't care if you do, because it's not a standard that results in meaningful contributions being made to party goals like "killing monsters" or "not dying".

This would point to a need to fix armors : I always found very curious that 1st level characters could already wear full plate. For me full plate should be something for relatively high level fighters and should protect way more. +1 AC per level for fighters as a rule of thumb ?

Darg

2020-09-04, 03:26 AM

That's not the place you need to look. Take a look at the monsters. At 10th level, your frontliner needs to go toe-to-toe with a Fire Giant (https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Fire_Giant). That hits AC 23 on a 3. Good luck winning that fight, especially as a sword and board Fighter. Even caster monsters like the Couatl are hitting you about half the time. You might be able to hit this standard, but I don't care if you do, because it's not a standard that results in meaningful contributions being made to party goals like "killing monsters" or "not dying".

Barkskin? Shield of Faith? Fighting defensively? That brings the AC up to 31, 33 with a medium shield. Personally I am a fan of the duelist's Elaborate Parry at level 13 even if wearing armor. A defending weapon with magic weapon cast on it can increase AC by another 3.

Ignimortis

2020-09-04, 03:28 AM

This would point to a need to fix armors : I always found very curious that 1st level characters could already wear full plate. For me full plate should be something for relatively high level fighters and should protect way more. +1 AC per level for fighters as a rule of thumb ?

1st level characters cannot afford full plate. Normally, you'd transition to using full plate over halfplate or chainmail at level 4 or 5, which is high enough. Furthermore, it's not exactly about armor being bad, it's more about AC progression sucking in general. Perhaps all characters should get half their BAB (rounded down) in dodge-type AC?

Barkskin? Shield of Faith? Fighting defensively? That brings the AC up to 31, 33 with a medium shield. Personally I am a fan of the duelist's Elaborate Parry at level 13 even if wearing armor.

I'm sorry, are we talking about things Fighter can do on their own without sacrificing their offensive capability, or about a party-buffed Fighter who has to cut down on damage to even have a 40-50% of not being hit? How is that normal?

Darg

2020-09-04, 03:48 AM

I'm sorry, are we talking about things Fighter can do on their own without sacrificing their offensive capability, or about a party-buffed Fighter who has to cut down on damage to even have a 40-50% of not being hit? How is that normal?

And? A wizard isn't going to have a much better time being in the front either. How is it normal for a level 10 fighter to fight a 15 HD fire giant alone?

Ignimortis

2020-09-04, 03:58 AM

And? A wizard isn't going to have a much better time being in the front either. How is it normal for a level 10 fighter to fight a 15 HD fire giant alone?

CR10 means that a level 10 character is supposed to have about even chances of beating a monster solo. CR10 against four people means it's not gonna be much trouble, it's a Medium encounter that isn't remotely challenging, it might make you spend some resources, but you're almost sure to win that with 4 people of level 10.

Getting hit on a 3+ for 3d6+15 is gonna kill a typical CON 16 average HP level 10 Fighter in about...26.5 vs 94 HP...yep, four hits. So basically one good Full attack and one more hit next turn. Can this Fighter get off 142 HP worth of damage in that timespan? Can your presumed Fighter, without party buffs, have about equal chances of beating a Fire Giant at their own game of standing still and doling out a beating to the other side?

Also, I'm not even gonna recount every way that a level 10 Wizard can win this fight if they win initiative. You should probably be aware of at least a few yourself.

Darg

2020-09-04, 05:13 AM

CR10 means that a level 10 character is supposed to have about even chances of beating a monster solo. CR10 against four people means it's not gonna be much trouble, it's a Medium encounter that isn't remotely challenging, it might make you spend some resources, but you're almost sure to win that with 4 people of level 10.

Getting hit on a 3+ for 3d6+15 is gonna kill a typical CON 16 average HP level 10 Fighter in about...26.5 vs 94 HP...yep, four hits. So basically one good Full attack and one more hit next turn. Can this Fighter get off 142 HP worth of damage in that timespan? Can your presumed Fighter, without party buffs, have about equal chances of beating a Fire Giant at their own game of standing still and doling out a beating to the other side?

Also, I'm not even gonna recount every way that a level 10 Wizard can win this fight if they win initiative. You should probably be aware of at least a few yourself.

That's the thing, you are expecting the wizard to be prepared for this encounter. CR 10 is balanced for a group of 4 level 10s.

By RAW, the fighter could simply duck behind his tower shield for 50% concealment after making their attacks on their turn and giving up their AoOs. plate +2, a spiked heavy shield +2 with improved shield bash, +1 from shield specialization, couple of potions of barkskin and shield of faith gives +4 for 30, improved combat expertise for another +9. That's a 2.5% chance to hit you while the fighter (buffed with a bull's strength potion) with 24 str and weapon focus has a 30% chance to hit. That is after you've been peppering the giant with arrows because you don't have to fear their rock throw.

Ignimortis

2020-09-04, 05:39 AM

That's the thing, you are expecting the wizard to be prepared for this encounter. CR 10 is balanced for a group of 4 level 10s.

By RAW, the fighter could simply duck behind his tower shield for 50% concealment after making their attacks on their turn and giving up their AoOs. plate +2, a spiked heavy shield +2 with improved shield bash, +1 from shield specialization, couple of potions of barkskin and shield of faith gives +4 for 30, improved combat expertise for another +9. That's a 2.5% chance to hit you while the fighter (buffed with a bull's strength potion) with 24 str and weapon focus has a 30% chance to hit. That is after you've been peppering the giant with arrows because you don't have to fear their rock throw.

I would expect any Wizard of level 10 to come packing at least a few universally-useful spells, such as Fly and/or Polymorph. Even without significant optimization, a generally equipped caster (core only, at that) at that level packs about 25 AC (4 from items, 3 (possibly more, but I'm low-balling) from DEX and 8 from spells) just with Mage Armor and Shield going on (one of which is a day-long buff, and the other is a 1st-level spell that lasts for minutes), which means that a rock-throwing giant (who can't reach a flying mage otherwise) has about 25% to hit them. I'm not even doing anything special like enchanted mithril feycraft chain shirts or something. That's three spells to basically invalidate the encounter's main strength, without resorting to save-or-sucks.

I am a poor Wizard player (and I like martials much better), so I'm sure someone can suggest something that will involve a generalist spell used wisely to solve the encounter pretty much instantly.

Meanwhile, you're burning 3 actions to chug potions, and assuming that you start off a combat far away, where you can spend several turns plinking away at the giant. Cover can be negated by the giant taking a 5-ft step to the side, and you're basically lugging around two shields as well as investing feats into fighting with shields to pull this off. What's a 2H fighter to do here? What does an archer fighter do here?

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-04, 07:19 AM

This is an interesting idea, but then there should be some sort of support for really tough characters, which isn't limited by class. Toughness and Improved Toughness and whatever don't really function as such, so there should be something better — but not good enough for everyone to take it as a priority.

I'm not sure you can produce something that is "like Constitution" without having it run into the same problems as Constitution. That is, being the obvious best attribute after whatever attributes your class requires, and being to some degree a tax attribute for building characters that are survivable at all.

The issue is with abilities that grant you access to other abilities, not the exact concept of "mind mage". You can structure mind magic in a way that disallows using other creatures' special abilities, but I see how someone might dislike that. If you have a solution for that that doesn't involve cutting down every monster and NPC ability.

Sure, but equally the problems with the Wizard being too good as a generalist are a result of specialists not having any superior tools, not any inherent issue with its concept.

I will precede "balanced" with "IMO" each time it's relevant, if you wish. It's a nitpick in the same vein as "what spellcasters do you mean, Wizard or Adept?".

That's not really what I'm asking for, unless you think that the Cleric and Wizard aren't balanced against each other, which seems like a fairly extreme position. I don't like the balance point where everyone is about as good as a Fighter, but I'll freely acknowledge that it is, in fact, balanced. That's my issue with insisting the Wizard and company aren't balanced. It implicitly forces the conversation from "should we nerf the Wizard or buff the Fighter" to "how much should we nerf the Wizard".

The closest thing I ever played to a martial character in that edition was a swordsage spec'd in Shadow Hand...and of course, a DMM cleric with the War domain.

Aren't those both martial characters? "Martial" doesn't mean "no spells" or "no cool abilities", it means "primarily fights as a physical combatant". So what we need to do to get you playing martial characters is to make them more like Tome of Battle or give them some spellcasting. Both seem like reasonable goals.

Because our current subject is the problematic Fighter class, as everyone can fight on par or better so we don't need it ?

Balance means that everyone is supposed to be as effective in combat as any other class, though not necessarily in the same way. As such, it's true that we don't particularly need the Fighter, but we also don't particularly need the Wizard or the Bard or the Ranger either. No class is necessary, but that's a good thing because it allows people a greater degree of freedom in choosing their class.

That's the thing, you are expecting the wizard to be prepared for this encounter. CR 10 is balanced for a group of 4 level 10s.

CR 10 is balanced to burn about 25% of the resources of a party of 10th level characters. It's not balanced to be a particularly difficult fight, as a 10th level character is CR 10, and it's not really reasonable to expect a 10th level Wizard to challenge a 10th level Wizard, a 10th level Cleric, a 10th level Fighter, and a 10th level Rogue.

CasualViking

2020-09-04, 08:57 AM

As for the fighter class itself, its main good point is polyvalence : who can fight in a tavern brawl, in tunnels during a siege, in the dark, in duels, during a skirmish, in a pitched battle ? Only fighters. And a typical campaign should see all these situations, especially pitched battles - where only the fighter can wear heavy armor easily.

That is the opposite of true. Fighters specialize in one weapon and combat style (and those that don't suck even harder). Meanwhile they lack the ability to adapt to adverse combat conditions (invisible enemies, darkness, being underwater, enemies rudely not engaging in melee etc.).

CasualViking

2020-09-04, 08:59 AM

CR 10 is balanced to burn about 25% of the resources of a party of 10th level characters. It's not balanced to be a particularly difficult fight, as a 10th level character is CR 10, and it's not really reasonable to expect a 10th level Wizard to challenge a 10th level Wizard, a 10th level Cleric, a 10th level Fighter, and a 10th level Rogue.

No, CR 10 was intended to be balanced to burn about 25% of daily resources. In practice, a bog-standard CR 10 encounter is barely worth getting out the minis for against a level 10 party.

Ryuken

2020-09-04, 11:58 AM

I've been playing since the Basic box up to 3.5 (pc & dm). Never experienced the issues I read on these forums about the fighter compared to other classes. Its seems that a lot of the talk about fixes or balance or whatnot is about bringing fighters up to par with another class, but that's why there are other classes IMHO.

For those of you old enough to remember or have caught it on streaming, think of the original TV A-Team. Want stuff built or knocked out - BA. Sleaze your way into that secure facility - Face. Cause a little mayhem - Murdock. Planning & tactics - Hannibal. Just like an adventuring party, their combined strengths kick butt. Alone, they get in trouble.

IMX the fighter has always been played as that squire or town militia member that wanted more than currying somebody's horse or standing boring watches. In game terms, fighters start out as young as 16 - high school age. No master tacticians, no smooth talkers, no ninja-like stalkers at that age. But you know how to climb, swim, and jump (normal active childhood pursuits), how to deal with horses (handle animal), use what little authority you have to bully others (intimidate) and maybe some crafting skills from necessity or a failed apprenticeship.

For me, it makes RP sense and is mechanically supported. As the fighter matures, she develops a fighting style through feats that sets her apart from others (ranged attacks, CQB, whatever). Is she supposed to be the party's face/scout/know-it-all? Only in a pinch and if that's a role that she wants to step into (via cc skill points).

Fighters, like the stereotypical dumb GI, are supposed to take a lot of punishment & excel at endurance stuff like forced marches, overloaded movement and that kind of stuff (high Fort saves). More dodge-y in melee than in area (poor Ref saves --look, a boulder coming straight for my formation, hope it misses me) and more prone to follow another's commands (poor Will saves - soldier, you will march into that arrowstorm and take that castle gate or I will fong you!)

Fighters are not supposed to clear the room on the same level as spellcasters. Another military analogy, but think of how many movies have the grunts waiting for mortar/armor/artillery/air to hit a target zone before they go in to mop up. And glad to not have to weather the enemy response. The fighter wades in to take care of whatever survived the spellcaster's big boom. At higher levels they're more special forces than line infantry in terms of target focus & lethality.

The only tweaks I use are the weapon group proficiency rules from UA because they make more RP sense to me. But I use them with all classes. Makes weapon focus/specialization more worthwhile. I also use the skill knowledge feat from that book to turn cross-class into class skills, but it again is open to all classes and can be used when a bonus feat is gained (any class).

The other tweak I use when the group is small is the rogue variant in the UA when gestalted with fighter. Gives you the skillset of the rogue and a feat at every level and the expense of sneak attack.

My 2cp

Ignimortis

2020-09-04, 12:20 PM

For those of you old enough to remember or have caught it on streaming, think of the original TV A-Team. Want stuff built or knocked out - BA. Sleaze your way into that secure facility - Face. Cause a little mayhem - Murdock. Planning & tactics - Hannibal. Just like an adventuring party, their combined strengths kick butt. Alone, they get in trouble.

What you're describing is more Shadowrun than D&D. In D&D, everyone fights, and fights well. What would BA do if Face could mow enemies down just as well, and if Hannibal ended the fight with one move without BA even lifting a finger? Why would he even be there if that worked 90% of the time?

IMX the fighter has always been played as that squire or town militia member that wanted more than currying somebody's horse or standing boring watches. In game terms, fighters start out as young as 16 - high school age. No master tacticians, no smooth talkers, no ninja-like stalkers at that age. But you know how to climb, swim, and jump (normal active childhood pursuits), how to deal with horses (handle animal), use what little authority you have to bully others (intimidate) and maybe some crafting skills from necessity or a failed apprenticeship.

If only you had the skillpoints to know how to do even half those things. 2+Int generally means either 2, 3 or at best 4 skill points per level. So you can climb, jump and intimidate, but nothing else. You have low CHA, so you don't Intimidate very well despite being a huge bully.

For me, it makes RP sense and is mechanically supported. As the fighter matures, she develops a fighting style through feats that sets her apart from others (ranged attacks, CQB, whatever). Is she supposed to be the party's face/scout/know-it-all? Only in a pinch and if that's a role that she wants to step into (via cc skill points).

Fighters, like the stereotypical dumb GI, are supposed to take a lot of punishment & excel at endurance stuff like forced marches, overloaded movement and that kind of stuff (high Fort saves). More dodge-y in melee than in area (poor Ref saves --look, a boulder coming straight for my formation, hope it misses me) and more prone to follow another's commands (poor Will saves - soldier, you will march into that arrowstorm and take that castle gate or I will fong you!)

What do your wizard or cleric do, again? Do they only throw fireballs and make Knowledge (Arcana) checks, or heal/buff the Fighter respectively? Because at that level of contribution, the Fighter is sort of balanced. It's just that other classes can do so much more if they actually try.

I seriously don't mean any offense, but this point of view sounds either like "Fighters are supposed to suck" or so blissfully low-OP that nothing in this thread really applies to your games, because your caster players don't put any effort into using their magic and class abilities for anything besides the simplest of contributions.

JyP

2020-09-04, 12:21 PM

Balance means that everyone is supposed to be as effective in combat as any other class, though not necessarily in the same way. As such, it's true that we don't particularly need the Fighter, but we also don't particularly need the Wizard or the Bard or the Ranger either. No class is necessary, but that's a good thing because it allows people a greater degree of freedom in choosing their class.
While I agree that D&D 3 design is to setup every class as effective in combat, which was not true in previous editions :
- in practice it did not work as fighters are seen as subpar compared to other classes in combat
- this design choice is part of the problem for me and explain a bit why fighters are subpar

That is the opposite of true. Fighters specialize in one weapon and combat style (and those that don't suck even harder). Meanwhile they lack the ability to adapt to adverse combat conditions (invisible enemies, darkness, being underwater, enemies rudely not engaging in melee etc.).
Well, fighter class is the one with the most feats - this novelty introduced in D&D 3. So I guess the intent was to show that fighters were the most versatile in combat, as they could brawl / disarm / cleave / sunder / blind-fight, specialize in a weapon...
It felt flat compared to wizards with the right prepared spells though - feats are not so much compared to spells. I guess Tome of Battle is a kind of answer...

King of Nowhere

2020-09-04, 03:31 PM

i haven't seen any problem with the fighter concept, intended as the badass normal guy in the party. in my games they perform well enough

sure, as the badass normal, they have many limitations they cannot overcome on their own. like flying, or finding invisible opponents. for that, they must either be prepared with their equipment (it is a good thing for balance to give more wealth than the standard), or they have to rely on buffs from their teammates. which is not a dirty thing, contrary to what some people here think.
taking that into account, decently optimized fighters are fully capable of making themselves useful. at lower level, the casters won't have all those many spells, and it's definitely useful to have a guy who can mop up the remanining enemies. that still applies to higher levels for the most powerful effects. as our wizard is fond of quoting, "do not disturb me for anything with a CR below X". having two competent melee types in the party allows our casters to save the big guns for when it really matters.
but secondly, at high level fighters have an unique advantage that make them precious: they are reliable hitters. sure, magic is powerful and stuff. but magic can be resisted. the enemy can make his saving throw, can have spell resistance (possibly from a spell), can be in an antimagic field, can have protection from elements, can have a contingency, can counterspell... and sure, there are workarounds for all of that, and you can prepare for the villain, but maybe the villain also prepared for you, and buffed accordingly. a competent fighter (meaning one who has ways to see invisible opponents, reach flying opponents and all that) is much harder to resist. you can try to keep the distance, but if the fighter is prepared, it won't be a guarantee, and it will cost you actions. buffing your AC may save you some hits, but it won't protect you entirely. and you can't get enough damage reduction to matter.
I ran a campaign where everyone had money up the wazoo (the world was high magic, so magic loot was more common and easier to get), and with the extra layer of more magical defences and some utility items (mostly to cover piercing mirror images or teleporting out of forcecages) fighters were actually very annoying for casters. magic was powerful, but with everyone having buffed defences, it wasn't all that effective. figthers, on the other hand, dealt damage and were reliable. a prepared caster would still win a 1 on 1 fight, but they could no longer just win with a spell, because the fighter had acquired immunity to all the stuff that would normally finish the fight immediately, and they could not just turn invisible and ignore the fighter either. the balance only skewed strongly in favor of the casters when disjunction came into play, because that strips the fighter of most defences. even then, if your 17th level wizard is spending one disjunction to strip the fighter of defences (possibly 2, high level fighters in my world still managed around +20 to will save that would let them keep some stuff) and another spell to stop the fighter, then the fighter was very useful.
the only way the casters could really dominate the battlefield would be through minionmancy abuse and action economy breaking, two things that i made sure to forbid.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-04, 03:54 PM

this design choice is part of the problem for me and explain a bit why fighters are subpar

Okay, now we're getting somewhere. Why is the alternative design choice better?

sure, as the badass normal, they have many limitations they cannot overcome on their own. like flying, or finding invisible opponents.

at high level fighters have an unique advantage that make them precious: they are reliable hitters.

Except you literally just said they aren't. Which is it? Are there a bunch of things Fighters can't deal with, or are they reliable? Both can't be true.

Ryuken

2020-09-04, 04:40 PM

I seriously don't mean any offense, but this point of view sounds either like "Fighters are supposed to suck" or so blissfully low-OP that nothing in this thread really applies to your games, because your caster players don't put any effort into using their magic and class abilities for anything besides the simplest of contributions.

No offense taken. But it seems that we may differ on how classes 'suck' and what they 'contribute' to the game. If the class has the framework for the character you want to role play, then how is it bad? There are tons of options to branch out with multi/PrC if the player finds that something is lacking or wanted. I view that more as character growth than optimizing.

And is a class only worthwhile based on a positive damage-to-action ratio? Or how skillful? I guess that's the impetus for reading this thread and posting. I see many ideas for how to make a fighter kill more things at once (like a wizard) or have more skills (like the rogue)...but then you're not playing a Fighter.

For me, the core ID of the fighter (and any class, really) is what the player imagines and the class chassis provides the framework to build upon with skill choices & feats. No one class will do everything, hence multis and PrCs. No one class can stand on its own in an adventuring setting either.

King of Nowhere

2020-09-04, 07:44 PM

Except you literally just said they aren't. Which is it? Are there a bunch of things Fighters can't deal with, or are they reliable? Both can't be true.
i said that they need equipment or buff spells to deal with those things.

sure, as the badass normal, they have many limitations they cannot overcome on their own. like flying, or finding invisible opponents. for that, they must either be prepared with their equipment (it is a good thing for balance to give more wealth than the standard), or they have to rely on buffs from their teammates. which is not a dirty thing, contrary to what some people here think.

but, if they have those, then they contribute reliably in combat.

out of combat they are indeed pretty limited, and i would give them more skill points and more class skills.

newguydude1

2020-09-04, 08:05 PM

AntiAuthority

2020-09-04, 08:14 PM

And is a class only worthwhile based on a positive damage-to-action ratio? Or how skillful? I guess that's the impetus for reading this thread and posting. I see many ideas for how to make a fighter kill more things at once (like a wizard) or have more skills (like the rogue)...but then you're not playing a Fighter.

For me, the core ID of the fighter (and any class, really) is what the player imagines and the class chassis provides the framework to build upon with skill choices & feats.

Why is such a character not a Fighter at that point? What about the players who do imagine Fighters as being capable of doing those things, and why are they less valid interpretations of Fighters if it's up to the person's imagination?

For me, it's my imagination that a Fighter should be able to kill large groups of enemies (they train to fight, so I assume they'd be pretty amazing at it) and have a lot of skills (points). Even AD&D's PHB mentioned characters capable of incredible feats of killing multiple enemies at once/being incredibly skilled like Cu Chulainn as Fighters. I only know a bit about Conan, but Conan the Barbarian, the term where Fighting-Man (later Fighter) came from is skilled at things outside of doing raw damage as well, from linguistics, sailing, horseback riding and stealth lending to the skilled portion just as valid an interpretation as a Fighter as well. IIRC from my talks with people about earlier editions (anyone who is more familiar with the rules of that system, correct me if I'm misremembering/misunderstanding), but Fighters got an optional rule for a number of attacks per their HD against weak mobs of enemies. Stepping outside of older editions and directly stated inspirations... There are myths of warriors soloing hundreds/thousands of people, being impossibly fast at attacking/movement, affecting the environment, charming people into doing whatever they want, disguising themselves, sneaking around, communicating with animals for information, being great military leaders, playing political games, inspiring their troops, etc. which would all fit with the having more skills part. This isn't getting into more modern depicts of what I imagine fantastic Fighters would be capable of...

So why is wanting to be able to kill more enemies/have more skills "not a Fighter" if it's open to the imagination of the player (in my imagination, such a character would be a Fighter) and the earlier inspirations for characters in myth/fiction (which the Fighter/Warrior classes in D&D were based on) were capable of doing these things? And why is the Wizard supposed to be better at killing more enemies than the person who is trained to fight like a Fighter?

No one class will do everything, hence multis and PrCs. No one class can stand on its own in an adventuring setting either.

I'm not really one for Optimization or anything, and I rarely played spellcasters in 3.PF but certain classes can (pretty much) do that. Say a Universalist Wizard for example... If they have Beast Shape/Magical Beast Shape, they can polymorph themselves into beat sticks or just use Summon Monster to summon meat shields in the form of disposable Fighters (some of which have spells, so they can use Summon Monster to indirectly cast spells as well) so they can fulfill the Fighter's niche... They can also cast Invisibility/Mass Invisibility to turn themselves/other invisible or use Knock to unlock doors or just use Trapfinder's Focus to give themselves a Rogue's class feature so they fulfill the Rogue's niche, along with being able to give everyone a score in Stealth comparable to a Rogue's. There's also how the Rage spell gives Wizards access to the Barbarian's Rage class feature... Wish lets them step on the toes of Clerics and Druids by casting spells from their classes...

Some classes can't do everything, but they get pretty close with spells.

Florian

2020-09-04, 08:36 PM

Just an idle thought:

The flaw doesn't lie with the concept of "Fighter", but rather with how the core concept of 3E/D20 got botched - the unified core rules, with their ascending BAB, Saves and so on.

Consider this: Earlier editions didn't work with an open ended scale, but rather with a clearly defined spectrum. As each class table was unique, each class had a clearly defined spot in that spectrum.

Sword, board and full plate had a vastly different meaning than elven chain or mage armor. In essence, the Fighter (and later sub classes) started out in parts of the spectrum that other classes partially couldn't even reach.

So imho, it´s not so much the concept, but rather the core mechanics.

Bartmanhomer

2020-09-04, 08:49 PM

What about Gish Fighter? We've been talking about mundane Fighters throughout the whole entire thread and no one didn't mention Gish Fighters. :confused:

Kelb_Panthera

2020-09-05, 12:25 AM

That's not level-appropriate gear for a 10th level Fighter. All those bonuses are too low, and you're not buying armor or a ranged weapon. Also it's not clear what necklace you're buying, but if your plan is an amulet of natural armor over an amulet of health, that's an issue too.

Read more carefully. I explicitly said that it was a necklace of natural armor and in the very paragraph you quoted I mentioned I was coming back to armor and I did. I did this very deliberately because AC and spending on armor has by far the greatest variability for level appropriate gear. If we were talking about a finesse fighter in the example, that'd be 19 dex and he'd be able to wear a +2 chainshirt to get the same AC. That'd just about double the armor cost over the example given though.

I mean, really. The Wizard can make a weapon +2 for the cost of a 3rd level spell slot, except it doesn't even cost that, because the spell lasts long enough for you to re-prepare your spells before it expires. If your plan is to spend money on a weapon with a smaller bonus than that, I don't care if it fits the MIC guidelines, it's clearly inadequate in the face of the realities of the system.

It's a 4th level slot or a daily use off of an item or class feature in addition to that 3rd level to have it last -most- of the way to next prep'. 10 hours is -just- enough to go through an adventuring day but leaves you vulnerable during rest and prep'. Even then, it's a single dispel away from being gone until you burn another slot and/or charge to restore it.

More importantly, a wizard has to catch up FIVE points of base attack bonus if he's using it himself. If he's otherwise the same (LOL) then he's 4 points behind at this point and getting one less attack unless you're gonna bring up haste next. Then you're still 3 points behind on to-hit but at least your extra attack is at the same attack bonus.

Of course, you could cast those spells on the fighter and make him better at hitting things than either of you would be alone but for some reason that practice is, frankly, crapped upon with great fervor around these parts.

That's not the place you need to look. Take a look at the monsters. At 10th level, your frontliner needs to go toe-to-toe with a Fire Giant (https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Fire_Giant). That hits AC 23 on a 3. Good luck winning that fight, especially as a sword and board Fighter. Even caster monsters like the Couatl are hitting you about half the time. You might be able to hit this standard, but I don't care if you do, because it's not a standard that results in meaningful contributions being made to party goals like "killing monsters" or "not dying".

Well, first and foremost is the fact that the common practice of "stand next to the enemy and full attack until you or it is dead" has always been a pretty stupid one.

Using disarm or trip while fighting defensively, using combat expertise, or using (get this) spring attack to shift the numbers around and prevent the enemy from full attacking can make a world of difference. Even sundering is an option, oft derided, to relieve the enemy of his primary weapon; hardness 10 and 20 HP for a large greatsword isn't that hard to chew through.

"Oh noes, combat will take longer and you're (maybe) destroying loot!" but I'm winning though.

The goal in my examples was to show you can hit system expectations for plain numbers without spending "all of your WBL" You can, and should, still spend money on being better at your job in other ways. A net can be used without proficiency to good effect against this example foe, making him easier to hit and less able to return attacks. Tanglefoot bags can force him to waste an action or stay where he is.

Hell, a composite longbow will let you do similar damage to your primary weapon until and unless you start going -beyond- minimum targets with its enhancements and you can just kite the thing to death. If you'd not merely skimmed, you will have noticed that a +2 weapon isn't out of the question at level 10, even by the given guidelines, and psychokinetic is a decent choice for a first special ability unless you want to hold off for better in a few levels.

Then, of course, there's the surplus treasure that is generated above and beyond WBL that is -expected- to be used on expendable things like the afformentioned alchemy items or (drum roll) potions and oils. A fight with a fire giant seems like a -fantastic- time to pop a potion of enlarge person or tattoo of expansion. Maybe rub your armor down with a magic vestment pot.

Finally, there's the optimizer's solution; shocktrooper + leap attack + a valorous weapon (let's call it a greataxe) and dump your whole BAB for a whopping 2d12+66 damage and force a massive damage save. Do that twice (still got way more than enough gold and/or feats to pick up sudden leap and do them back to back on consecutive rounds) and it's down if not dead regardless.

Basically, the only way you're screwed against a fire-giant or the like is if you come at it like the stereotypical "big stupid fighter" and just trade full attacks until one of you goes down.

Just for the sake of argument though, let's crank that AC.

We'll go for the +2 ring and amulet, a +2 suit of plate, and a +3 heavy shield to go along with the +2 cloak, +2 belt and +1 weapon. That's 4000, 4000, 5650, 9170, 4000, 4000, and 2300. That's 30,820 which leaves you a bit over 18k to play with (roughly 37% of WBL) and gets you to AC 30 while still hitting the fire giant on a 3. That's -still- not as high as it can go though.

With primary attacks, you hit the giant almost every time while he hits you just over half of the time and you -still- haven't spent nearly all of your WBL. You're not going to win just trading full attacks like an idiot even half the time but you're to the point where it's not out of the question anymore. Employing any of the tactical options mentioned above can push it right up to even or even past it to reliably winning.

Quentinas

2020-09-05, 04:46 AM

One thing i like of the figther and that can bring some useful thing are two of ACFs , especially Armor of God and resolute that give him new way to use his swift action and immediate action . Maybe a simple way to boost fighter usefulness (if compared to other melee class rather than the wizard) would be to give him bonus abilities (like armor of god) at some level. I don't know each ACF of the fighter but if at some level he can choose an option it could be more funny

For example let' assume that these option can be chosen at level 1 level 5 level 9 level 13 level 17 , so at some of his dead level but not to fast as if we would have put level 3 it would have become maybe a 3 level dip . These option could be Sneak attack , Armor of God, Resolute, and others that maybe we should create so that our fighter can do something else ,as a specialization

Florian

2020-09-05, 07:24 AM

What about Gish Fighter? We've been talking about mundane Fighters throughout the whole entire thread and no one didn't mention Gish Fighters. :confused:

In a sense, I hate those.

Ok, keep in mind what I said about earlier editions and what made the Fighter good there.

The high point of Fighters was being near indestructible. The combination of lance/sword, board and plate, coupled with very high saves made them so.

The Elf, later the Fighter/Wizard multiclass combo, was pretty much barred from reaching the same level of near invincibility. No shield, one-handed weapons only, only allowed armor is elven chainmail. Mind, you could use more traditional Fighter equipment, but that shut down your spellcasting completely. Being multiclass, the combo was essentially two levels behind to a single class Fighter or Wizard, making their saves less awesome.

Enter the Githyanki, the initial "Gish". The initial one was a multiclass Fighter 4/Wizard 4, with the noted difference that they came equipped in full plate and wielding a great sword, both _not_ shutting down their spellcasting.

Fast forward to 3E. Core Only "gish" are pretty much lackluster affairs. Something like FTR2/Wiz18 or PAL2/Sorc18 help initial survival, but is a handicap in the late game.

Enter 3.5E. The sheer amount of PrC turned that nearly upside down. Basically, there's no sense in playing a Fighter or, say, Sorcerer, when you can get both, 16/9th.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-05, 08:18 AM

No offense taken. But it seems that we may differ on how classes 'suck' and what they 'contribute' to the game. If the class has the framework for the character you want to role play, then how is it bad?

Because the game isn't pure role playing, there are also mechanics. If you want to play a character that contributes by fighting with weapons, it's not enough for the class to have the flavor of fighting with weapons, it also needs to be mechanically effective at fighting with weapons. Both for your sake and for the rest of your party's.

And is a class only worthwhile based on a positive damage-to-action ratio?

Yes, unless you're willing to accept "Commoner 20 with 3s in all his stats" as a reasonable 20th level character to play. Everyone accepts some minimum required power level. It's different for different people (and for the same people in different games), but the notion that the Fighter is too weak is an unfair judgement isn't reasonable. The Fighter is very weak. It is entirely reasonable to feel that it's too weak.

but, if they have those, then they contribute reliably in combat.

Then the Fighter isn't reliable. The Wizard is just good enough that when you split his resources between two characters, one of them is a reliable damage dealer and the other one can nuke things into oblivion. That certainly speaks well of the Wizard, but less so of the Fighter.

simply make a fighter bonus feat that gives at will gate or wish without prerequisites and the fighter chassis will become stronger with no modification.

Sure, but so will every other class. You could require a certain number of Fighter levels to take it, but at that point you're just writing class features in a more complicated way.

Of course, you could cast those spells on the fighter and make him better at hitting things than either of you would be alone but for some reason that practice is, frankly, crapped upon with great fervor around these parts.

Yes, because I could also cast them on the Cleric, who is like a Fighter, except instead of getting some bonus feats that are bad, he gets to see the future and summon angels. The reason people crap on "buff the Fighter into viability" is because characters should be viable on their own. Casting GMW to save on item costs should be a nice synergy bonus, not something you need to expect to have enough GP to function. Your party's casters could be a Dread Necromancer and a Beguiler, and neither of those guys get GMW. You still need to be able to do your job in that situation.

Using disarm or trip while fighting defensively, using combat expertise, or using (get this) spring attack to shift the numbers around and prevent the enemy from full attacking can make a world of difference.

Yes, using combat maneuvers on a creature that is larger than you, stronger than you, and has a higher BAB than you seems like a winning strategy. Similarly, Spring Attack reduces both participants to one attack per round, but the Fire Giant has more HP than you do and attacks for more damage than you do, so that doesn't seem great. Overall, a lot of your strategies seem to assume the Fire Giant will just sit there and try to full attack you while you dance around doing something clever. Of course, that's not actually how it's going to behave.

If you'd not merely skimmed, you will have noticed that a +2 weapon isn't out of the question at level 10

I didn't skim, I stopped reading when you presented "weapon that is worse than what a Wizard can make for free" as an option I care about. You want at least a +3 weapon. And probably a secondary weapon so you're not dead to anything that can fly. You're simply assuming way to small of a budget for magic items to be realistic, and you're continuing to do so.

Realistically, a 10th level character wants +4 stat items, MIC guidelines be damned. That leaves you with just 17k GP after buying your Strength and Constitution boosters. So you can afford a +3 primary weapon, and then you have 8k GP to spend on all of a +saves items, +armor items of whatever combination you want, any consumable buffs, a way of dealing with fliers, and utility. That dog doesn't hunt, but that's what a realistic set of magic items looks like at that level. WBL is simply too low for characters that rely on items to be viable.

Seerow

2020-09-05, 08:36 AM

fighter class doesnt need change just like wizard class doesnt need change.
wizard is spells. its op ness is from spells available.
fighter class is fighter bonus feats. its trash ness is from feats available.

simply make a fighter bonus feat that gives at will gate or wish without prerequisites and the fighter chassis will become stronger with no modification.

A Wizard has a minimum of 43 spells known at 20th level, not counting cantrips, and it scales up into the hundreds or thousands.

A Cleric or Druid each have hundreds or thousands of spells at their fingertips.

Even the Sorcerer has 34 spells known.

If you boosted the power level of every feat to be level appropriate for the level you got it, or even just straight up turned feats into spells, the Fighter would still be far behind on versatility. 11 bonus feats is not enough to compete even when you take the relative power of feats out of the equation. Each feat would need to be the equivalent of 3-4 spells, which is just silly.

King of Nowhere

2020-09-05, 09:25 AM

Then the Fighter isn't reliable. The Wizard is just good enough that when you split his resources between two characters, one of them is a reliable damage dealer and the other one can nuke things into oblivion. That certainly speaks well of the Wizard, but less so of the Fighter.

and what, exactly, is the problem with that?
it's never been a problem at any of my tables, ever.
it's only a problem if people turn it into a problem. but then, the people are the problem in that case.

here we are discussing the fighter as a "badass normal" concept. so you have a guy with charles atlas superpowers, and you have a guy who can reshape reality several times per round. you can't balance them so that they would be equal. but you can balance them so that both can contribute, with some teamplay.
then, if people approach a cooperative game without wanting to cooperate*, i reiterate, the problem is with the people.

*this applies both to casters who don't want to share buffs, and to martials that want the casters to mostly cater to them. whining goes both ways.

Anthrowhale

2020-09-05, 09:38 AM

...

...

This discussion is reminding me of the one around whether an L20 fighter can kill a Pit Fiend eventually leading to this core fighter (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=22350680&postcount=1481), which was quite capable.

My impression from that exercise was that fighters can be optimized to deal with game-expectation challenges via careful use of wealth resources. A couple other comments:

The Generic Warrior (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/genericClasses.htm#warrior") is a better designed Fighter in my opinion. The ability to choose class skills is fantastic, as is the ability to pick up evasion/uncanny dodge/sneak attack. Various very nice tome of battle abilities like Shadow Jaunt (how is that Ex?), Iron Heart Surge, White Raven Tactics, or the Crusader healing strikes/stance can all be picked up via feats making them quite comparable.
Aside from that, I think the failure of the fighter to measure up to a druid/cleric/wizard is mostly the fault of the druid/cleric/wizard, which are seriously overpowered compared to game expectations. Given that, I think the right question is: "The core identity of the <tier 1> chassis and how to make it weaker"?

Florian

2020-09-05, 09:45 AM

Ignimortis

2020-09-05, 10:00 AM

This discussion is reminding me of the one around whether an L20 fighter can kill a Pit Fiend eventually leading to this core fighter (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=22350680&postcount=1481), which was quite capable.

As soon as I saw "we're gonna Polymorph Any Object the Fighter into a Cornugon by hiring a CL 31 wizard", I thought that maybe that's not what a Fighter player would want. I wonder if I will have to explain my reasoning for this.

Various very nice tome of battle abilities like Shadow Jaunt (how is that Ex?), Iron Heart Surge, White Raven Tactics, or the Crusader healing strikes/stance can all be picked up via feats making them quite comparable.

99% sure that Shadow Jaunt is (Su), same as any other Shadow Hand maneuver.

Aside from that, I think the failure of the fighter to measure up to a druid/cleric/wizard is mostly the fault of the druid/cleric/wizard, which are seriously overpowered compared to game expectations. Given that, I think the right question is: "The core identity of the <tier 1> chassis and how to make it weaker"?
[/LIST]

IMO, it's a failure of both. Fighter as a class is unable to properly handle level-appropriate challenges at some point after level 5 without picking specific magic items that allow them to adjust to some specific situations, and without going through a specific build that isn't by far the only or even the most popular representation of the archetype.

Florian

2020-09-05, 10:24 AM

IMO, it's a failure of both. Fighter as a class is unable to properly handle level-appropriate challenges at some point after level 5 without picking specific magic items that allow them to adjust to some specific situations, and without going through a specific build that isn't by far the only or even the most popular representation of the archetype.

It´s more a failure in general system design and being honest about the initial design.

D&D has extremely deep roots in skirmish-level wargaming and Dungeon Crawling. With this in mind, stuff like Paizo APs work, because they know the inherent limits and use stuff in an appropriate way.

Without that context, things break down pretty fast. Spells and monster abilities are then way above anything that can be dealt with, other than spells and abilities on equal level.

Pathfinder 2, Starfinder and 5E are at least a bit more honest about this.

Remuko

2020-09-05, 10:32 AM

Try a different approach.

Ok, we have an universal core structure, but then we veer off towards vastly different subsystems that have next to no overlap or design logic behind them.

For example, we have a level structure for spells, but a prerequisite structure for feats. I think this leads to valid questions:
- Why is there no equivalency to spell ranks in feats, especially when it comes to power? What would a level 9 feat look like?
- Why is there no prerequisite/chain structure in place for spells? For example, why don't need artillery-type of spells PBS/Precise Shot as a prerq, why don't elemental spells need knowledge of the respective elemental language?

Your point about access to options seems to be the main issue, tho. There isn't anything truly unified here.

i like this.

Anthrowhale

2020-09-05, 11:13 AM

As soon as I saw "we're gonna Polymorph Any Object the Fighter into a Cornugon by hiring a CL 31 wizard", I thought that maybe that's not what a Fighter player would want. I wonder if I will have to explain my reasoning for this.
No need to explain here, I'm sure it doesn't fit many concepts. You might find the halfling archer (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=22126857&postcount=49) before it of interest.

99% sure that Shadow Jaunt is (Su), same as any other Shadow Hand maneuver.

I don't see any blanket statement that Shadow Hand is Su, and there are many others which are not called out as such. For example "Stalker in the Night" is also Ex while "Shadow Noose" is Su.

IMO, it's a failure of both. Fighter as a class is unable to properly handle level-appropriate challenges at some point after level 5 without picking specific magic items that allow them to adjust to some specific situations, and without going through a specific build that isn't by far the only or even the most popular representation of the archetype.

Do you have an example of a fighter archetype for which a Generic Warrior can't handle level-appropriate challenges?

Ignimortis

2020-09-05, 11:28 AM

No need to explain here, I'm sure it doesn't fit many concepts. You might find the halfling archer (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=22126857&postcount=49) before it of interest.

I mean that on a more basic level. There are good Fighter builds, there are Fighter builds that obviate the Fighter's weaknesses by plugging them with one thing or another, but the issue here, is, well, the following.

How many Wizard builds, assuming some very basic optimization (no starting INT below 15, decent-ish CON/DEX (12-14 is fine), spell choice follows at least some logical thought instead of being purely random), are unplayable (i.e. fail to contribute anything of import without excessive coddling on part of other party members) before or after a certain level in the game?
How many Fighter builds, with the same basic assumptions, are unplayable by the same definition?

Basically, optimization floor matters a lot, and Fighter's too low.

I don't see any blanket statement that Shadow Hand is Su, and there are many others which are not called out as such. For example "Stalker in the Night" is also Ex while "Shadow Noose" is Su.

Interesting. It is, indeed, as far as I can see, Ex, and only specific maneuvers are marked as (Su). That's some ammo for my favourite "anything can be Ex, you just don't want it to do anything good enough to compete with spellcasting" gun.

Do you have an example of a fighter archetype for which a Generic Warrior can't handle level-appropriate challenges?

Good ole Sword and Board tends to fall off quite a bit, especially after level 10. I don't see in what way Generic Warrior is better at anything than normal Fighter except for being able to pick class skills and trade good Fort for good Will. Still 2+Int skills and no class abilities to speak of, except you can pick up Evasion and Sneak Attack (though both come online rather late compared to classes who usually get them).

Elves

2020-09-05, 11:53 AM

Why is there no equivalency to spell ranks in feats, especially when it comes to power? What would a level 9 feat look like?

Everyone gets feats, fighter just gets more, so you can't do spells:feats. If you want the fighter's abilities to be parallel to spells in any way you should make them a class-specific system the way spells are.

Ignimortis

2020-09-05, 12:01 PM

Everyone gets feats, fighter just gets more, so you can't do spells:feats. If you want the fighter's abilities to be parallel to spells in any way you should make them a class-specific system the way spells are.

And call them something else, because everyone gets feats. I propose "maneuvers".

Anthrowhale

2020-09-05, 12:08 PM

Basically, optimization floor matters a lot, and Fighter's too low.

I generally agree with this. If it was something like a sneak attack fighter where you could try 1d6 sneak attack for a fighter feat, the floor would be quite a bit higher.

Good ole Sword and Board tends to fall off quite a bit, especially after level 10. I don't see in what way Generic Warrior is better at anything than normal Fighter except for being able to pick class skills and trade good Fort for good Will. Still 2+Int skills and no class abilities to speak of, except you can pick up Evasion and Sneak Attack (though both come online rather late compared to classes who usually get them).

Sneak attack is advanced as well as retarded, depending on the level. It's also the obvious way to amp up sword & board damage. Something along the lines of:

Generic Warrior 20
Str 34=18+5(level)+5(inherent)+6(enhance), Dex 14, Con 14
Feats
1: Combat Reflexes
GW 1: Sneak Attack+2d6
3: Craven
GW 6: Double Team
GW 8: Sneak Attack+3d6
GW 16: Sneak Attack+4d6

At level 1 you have 2d6 sneak attack. Once you reach level 6, you and a cooperating buddy can reliably inflict sneak attack damage in melee. By level 20, you can deliver +68.5=+5(enhancement)+12(Str)+20(craven)+9d6(sneak attack) extra damage per hit. That's enough to burn through damage reduction and puts you in the ballpark of reasonable damage per hit. Using weapon crystals, you can even apply this to undead and constructs as needed. You can also take Iajutsu Focus too boost damage further when the enemy is flat-footed, which you can cause in a variety of ways.

Florian

2020-09-05, 12:16 PM

Everyone gets feats, fighter just gets more, so you can't do spells:feats. If you want the fighter's abilities to be parallel to spells in any way you should make them a class-specific system the way spells are.

We´re actually talking about a legacy problem.

You can't have both at the same time: A balanced core system and legacy classes that shape their respective subsystems.

Bartmanhomer

2020-09-05, 12:31 PM

In a sense, I hate those.

Ok, keep in mind what I said about earlier editions and what made the Fighter good there.

The high point of Fighters was being near indestructible. The combination of lance/sword, board and plate, coupled with very high saves made them so.

The Elf, later the Fighter/Wizard multiclass combo, was pretty much barred from reaching the same level of near invincibility. No shield, one-handed weapons only, only allowed armor is elven chainmail. Mind, you could use more traditional Fighter equipment, but that shut down your spellcasting completely. Being multiclass, the combo was essentially two levels behind to a single class Fighter or Wizard, making their saves less awesome.

Enter the Githyanki, the initial "Gish". The initial one was a multiclass Fighter 4/Wizard 4, with the noted difference that they came equipped in full plate and wielding a great sword, both _not_ shutting down their spellcasting.

Fast forward to 3E. Core Only "gish" are pretty much lackluster affairs. Something like FTR2/Wiz18 or PAL2/Sorc18 help initial survival, but is a handicap in the late game.

Enter 3.5E. The sheer amount of PrC turned that nearly upside down. Basically, there's no sense in playing a Fighter or, say, Sorcerer, when you can get both, 16/9th.

I never play the earlier editions of D&D but what other people have said that the Fighter was a very good class to play. Also about the Gish fighter is somewhat in improvement due to the spell caster spells.

Ignimortis

2020-09-05, 01:44 PM

I generally agree with this. If it was something like a sneak attack fighter where you could try 1d6 sneak attack for a fighter feat, the floor would be quite a bit higher.

Sneak attack is advanced as well as retarded, depending on the level. It's also the obvious way to amp up sword & board damage. Something along the lines of:

Generic Warrior 20
Str 34=18+5(level)+5(inherent)+6(enhance), Dex 14, Con 14
Feats
1: Combat Reflexes
GW 1: Sneak Attack+2d6
3: Craven
GW 6: Double Team
GW 8: Sneak Attack+3d6
GW 16: Sneak Attack+4d6

At level 1 you have 2d6 sneak attack. Once you reach level 6, you and a cooperating buddy can reliably inflict sneak attack damage in melee. By level 20, you can deliver +68.5=+5(enhancement)+12(Str)+20(craven)+9d6(sneak attack) extra damage per hit. That's enough to burn through damage reduction and puts you in the ballpark of reasonable damage per hit. Using weapon crystals, you can even apply this to undead and constructs as needed. You can also take Iajutsu Focus too boost damage further when the enemy is flat-footed, which you can cause in a variety of ways.

The ability to inflict meaningful damage was never in doubt. The issue is more with delivery and doing anything besides damage, where Generic Warrior falls flat about the same as normal. To do your job of doing damage all the time at level 20, you need at least some flight, some means of short-distance teleportation (preferably at-will or somewhat close to that, but 2 or 3/day should do?), and probably something like true sight at least. Frankly, all of those should have been in your kit since level 13 at the very least.

Psyren

2020-09-05, 01:53 PM

What else can be done to concoct a better fighter?

Start with PF Fighter and make the following baseline:

1) Combat Stamina
2) Advanced Weapon Training
3) Advanced Armor Training
4) A selection of feats should become core combat options (e.g. Power Attack and Awesome Blow should just be Things Martials Can Do if they're strong enough.)
5) A selection of Mythic powers should be normal feats (or even base combat options) instead, like Burst Through or Meat Shield.

This will give you a reasonably capable Fighter without needing to bolt on a maneuver and refresh system.

Anthrowhale

2020-09-05, 02:48 PM

The ability to inflict meaningful damage was never in doubt. The issue is more with delivery and doing anything besides damage, where Generic Warrior falls flat about the same as normal. To do your job of doing damage all the time at level 20, you need at least some flight, some means of short-distance teleportation (preferably at-will or somewhat close to that, but 2 or 3/day should do?), and probably something like true sight at least. Frankly, all of those should have been in your kit since level 13 at the very least.

All of these appear easily solved using simple wealth as per the List of Necessary Magic Items (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?187851-3-5-Lists-of-Necessary-Magic-Items).

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-05, 03:21 PM

Aggressively applying WBL to solve your problems rapidly turns the game into something that is based entirely on UMD abuse. Sure, you could use an Amber Amulet of Vermin to compensate for your lack of ability to fly. Alternatively, you could use it to summon CR 7 monsters for 700 GP a pop, completely obliterating any concept of game balance.

and what, exactly, is the problem with that?

Twofold. First, it sucks as a Fighter to have your role in the party be "buff receptacle". When I play a character, I don't want to have to go around begging the rest of the party to buff me until I can do my job. I just want to be able to do my job. Second, it sucks as Wizard to have to dedicate your spell slots to letting the Fighter do his job. Maybe I built a buff-bot, and that's what I want to be doing, but there are lots of other ways to build Wizards, and demanding that all of them dedicate a portion of their powers to buffing the Fighter instead of doing whatever they want their character to do is unfun.

it's only a problem if people turn it into a problem. but then, the people are the problem in that case.

Don't you apply some pretty heavy-handed nerfs to casters? You did that, as I understand it, to make non-casters more viable. Doesn't that mean that this was, in fact, a problem for you at one point? And since your solution was (IIRC) "no buffs > +5 from spells", not "stop playing with people who cast Knock", it seems to me that you do in fact understand that we want mechanical solutions to this sort of problem.

then, if people approach a cooperative game without wanting to cooperate*, i reiterate, the problem is with the people.

Again, would you allow someone to play a Commoner 20 with 3s in all his stats in a 20th level party? If not, you have already accepted in principle that balance is a desirable goal, and are merely haggling over how much the system should do to accommodate it.

This discussion is reminding me of the one around whether an L20 fighter can kill a Pit Fiend eventually leading to this core fighter (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=22350680&postcount=1481), which was quite capable.

So, I'm not going to read a 50 page thread to try to contextualize exactly where the goalposts were for that Fighter, but just from what the people on that page were saying, it doesn't seem like it was accepted as being particularly capable.

Aside from that, I think the failure of the fighter to measure up to a druid/cleric/wizard is mostly the fault of the druid/cleric/wizard, which are seriously overpowered compared to game expectations. Given that, I think the right question is: "The core identity of the <tier 1> chassis and how to make it weaker"?

No, they aren't. The game, even in Core, presents multiple monsters that are high level casters and also get a bunch of monster abilities. The Planetar is a CR 16 monster with 17th level Cleric casting, and also it's an angel. In the face of that, the claim that PCs having 16th level Cleric casting at level 16 is a problem seems rather obviously absurd. Beyond that, the Cleric/Druid/Wizard are simply better designed classes than the Fighter (except maybe the Cleric) and doing more interesting things. Even if we were to accept that those classes are broken now, it seems obviously better to redesign the game around the classes than get abilities that do interesting things than the ones that don't. Again, we tried playing "how much can we nerf the Wizard", and it gave us the worst edition of the game that ever existed. Maybe let's not try that again?

IMO, it's a failure of both. Fighter as a class is unable to properly handle level-appropriate challenges at some point after level 5 without picking specific magic items that allow them to adjust to some specific situations, and without going through a specific build that isn't by far the only or even the most popular representation of the archetype.

It's also worth pointing out that this is a more serious problem than the casters over-performing. The party is supposed to win. If the Wizard wins extra hard, that is fundamentally okay. If the Fighter doesn't win, that's a real and serious problem.

Anthrowhale

2020-09-05, 04:24 PM

So, I'm not going to read a 50 page thread to try to contextualize exactly where the goalposts were for that Fighter, but just from what the people on that page were saying, it doesn't seem like it was accepted as being particularly capable.

Forming your own opinion based on the build alone is both more efficient and perhaps more reliable. More generally, if your preconception of what a Fighter can do is so strong that you aren't interested in looking at builds I expect a short discussion.

No, they aren't. The game, even in Core, presents multiple monsters that are high level casters and also get a bunch of monster abilities. The Planetar is a CR 16 monster with 17th level Cleric casting, and also it's an angel. In the face of that, the claim that PCs having 16th level Cleric casting at level 16 is a problem seems rather obviously absurd.

To me, this seems like a further argument that the game mispegs the value of casting. As an example, a mere 14th level cleric can pull off Surge of Fortune + Sense Weakness with a Vorpal blade to kill opponents with a massively higher CR many times per day. The limiting factor here is just affording a +1 Vorpal blade.

Beyond that, the Cleric/Druid/Wizard are simply better designed classes than the Fighter (except maybe the Cleric) and doing more interesting things. Even if we were to accept that those classes are broken now, it seems obviously better to redesign the game around the classes than get abilities that do interesting things than the ones that don't. Again, we tried playing "how much can we nerf the Wizard", and it gave us the worst edition of the game that ever existed. Maybe let's not try that again?

I personally don't find waltzing through the game on easy mode all that interesting.

Florian

2020-09-05, 04:38 PM

@Anthro:

I think some things only make sense when you understand 3E to actually mean AD&D 3rd. That helps a lot with understanding why the devs constantly overrated always-on abilities, while underrating spells.

Troacctid

2020-09-05, 05:35 PM

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-05, 05:53 PM

Forming your own opinion based on the build alone is both more efficient and perhaps more reliable.

Not really. I trust the people in that thread to have a better understanding of the specific assumptions that build was operating under than I would from reading that one post's worth of context, just as I would assume that if you grabbed a random person from that thread and showed them this post they would understand the broader argument being had here worse than I do. If you think the only way I can understand the point that build is supposed to make is by ignoring the people it was meant to argue against, that suggests to me that you are probably misrepresenting how effective it was by the standards of whatever that argument was about.

To me, this seems like a further argument that the game mispegs the value of casting. As an example, a mere 14th level cleric can pull off Surge of Fortune + Sense Weakness with a Vorpal blade to kill opponents with a massively higher CR many times per day. The limiting factor here is just affording a +1 Vorpal blade.

So your argument is that casting is definitely totally broken, it's just that the entire game has mistakenly treated it like an ability that it is reasonable for people to have? Because I find that unpersuasive.

I personally don't find waltzing through the game on easy mode all that interesting.

Casters aren't easy mode any more than mundanes are hard mode. Every class can face challenges that they struggle with or challenges they overcome easily. What separates casters from mundanes are abilities like Teleport that allow a far greater level of player agency. I personally consider player agency to be approximately the entire point of playing TTRPGs rather than reading books or watching TV, so it's my view that classes that give it to you are good.

I don't see why relying on items is a problem. It's part of the game rules.

As it turns out, so is every broken thing in the game.

The biggest problem with the fighter is that it's not that good at fighting. So make it better at fighting. That means more numbers and more fighting-related class features. Add some extra skill points and you're done, it's fixed. It's seriously not that hard.

No, the biggest problem is that it's not good at anything but fighting. Which means that if anyone is playing a Fighter, you can't have involved non-combat sequences, because that player won't get to do anything.

Yeesh. First you want context, then it's TL;DR. Make up your mind.

Yes, clearly the only possible level of details are "single sentence" and "10+ page thread". No one could possibly want any level of detail between those two things in any context.

Troacctid

2020-09-05, 06:06 PM

No, the biggest problem is that it's not good at anything but fighting. Which means that if anyone is playing a Fighter, you can't have involved non-combat sequences, because that player won't get to do anything.
That doesn't sound like a problem at all. You're talking about arguably the #1 best tanking class in the game that is extremely effective as a frontliner both on offense and defense while also having a few skill points that allow for a little bit of out-of-combat utility. A class that, as it happens, is already ranked in Tier 3, which, by most accounts, is a pretty good place to be, balance-wise. So what exactly is the issue here? Why do we need to fix anything with the crusader in the first place?

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-05, 06:14 PM

Why do we need to fix anything with the crusader in the first place?

Because I would like my Crusader to be better at running a crusade than an Expert is, and he currently is not. He's quite good at beating up the enemy's champion, but when it comes to challenges like "raise an army" or "deliver a siege", he's at best marginally more useful than a Warrior is.

Psyren

2020-09-05, 06:24 PM

Because I would like my Crusader to be better at running a crusade than an Expert is, and he currently is not. He's quite good at beating up the enemy's champion, but when it comes to challenges like "raise an army" or "deliver a siege", he's at best marginally more useful than a Warrior is.

"Raise an army" and "deliver a siege" sound less like class abilities and more like subsystems that wouldn't be applicable in all (or even most) campaigns.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-05, 06:26 PM

"Raise an army" and "deliver a siege" sound less like class abilities and more like subsystems that wouldn't be applicable in all (or even most) campaigns.

Why shouldn't classes have abilities that are relevant in those subsystems? The Wizard does. The Cleric does. The Druid does. Why shouldn't a class whose name is "Crusader" have some kind of ability that lets him crusade?

Anthrowhale

2020-09-05, 07:01 PM

...
Yep, a short conversation.

Separately, I've been thinking about a nerf for tier-1 classes: "Tier 1 classes are not affected by non-instantaneous spells". This still allows heal, teleport, blast, etc... but wipes out all forms of self-buffing. Between that and Fighter->Generic Warrior, the gap between classes looks much smaller.

Florian

2020-09-05, 07:33 PM

"Raise an army" and "deliver a siege" sound less like class abilities and more like subsystems that wouldn't be applicable in all (or even most) campaigns.

True.

But also serves to showcase the issue we are talking about. Basically the same as the topic of items, really.

Edit: I think you know what I mean. Still: Magic items, mass combat rules and stuff like that are all universal things. We could probably come up with a "best items ever" list and create a set of standard equipment based on that, outfit a generic example of each class with it and the result will largely be the same: Less support needed, more spell slots. Same with kingdom, downtime or mass combat rules.

Florian

2020-09-05, 07:46 PM

I never play the earlier editions of D&D but what other people have said that the Fighter was a very good class to play. Also about the Gish fighter is somewhat in improvement due to the spell caster spells.

The "Gish Fighter" is simply a caster with a sword, not a Fighter with spells.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-05, 07:47 PM

Yep, a short conversation.

That does tend to happen when you won't defend your positions. I'm perfectly happy to engage with you on this subject. I'm not going to accept your assessment of a contentious build on blind faith, and the more you act like I'm unreasonable for doing so, the further my assessment of your argument falls.

Separately, I've been thinking about a nerf for tier-1 classes: "Tier 1 classes are not affected by non-instantaneous spells". This still allows heal, teleport, blast, etc... but wipes out all forms of self-buffing. Between that and Fighter->Generic Warrior, the gap between classes looks much smaller.

Again, perhaps slightly more than "here is a change and a list of effects this change would have" is warranted when suggesting a sweeping change to the way the game works. Why this particular nerf? Why not a buff for some other other classes? Because right now it looks to me like the thought you've put into this consists of "think of idea" and "post idea", which does not make me optimistic about the quality of this idea. The game is complicated. Making random changes without considering their impacts almost always makes things worse.

The "Gish Fighter" is simply a caster with a sword, not a Fighter with spells.

What's the distinction between those two things?

Bartmanhomer

2020-09-05, 07:47 PM

The "Gish Fighter" is simply a caster with a sword, not a Fighter with spells.

Oh, I see. My bad. :sigh:

Florian

2020-09-05, 08:16 PM

What's the distinction between those two things?

What part is active, what part is in the support role.

The difference between a regular Wizard and one with full BAB and martial proficiency is that one stands around between slinging spells, the other grabs a longbow and goes full out... between slinging spells.

Psyren

2020-09-05, 09:39 PM

Why shouldn't classes have abilities that are relevant in those subsystems? The Wizard does. The Cleric does. The Druid does. Why shouldn't a class whose name is "Crusader" have some kind of ability that lets him crusade?

For starters, I don't consider raising an army or siegecraft to be the only possible ways to "crusade." A crusade can be championing a very personal or singular cause, and even if you put that aside, one of the key fantasies for a high-level martial PC is to be a "one-man army". Both of these are doable by a Crusader.

But even if you stick rigidly to a more traditional/historical definition of "crusade" - for the classes you referenced, do they, really? Yes, you can come up with roundabout ways for the wizard/cleric/druid to "raise an army" - like binding/creating a bunch of monsters, or dominating/convincing the guy who actually has the authority to do so, or breaking WBL to hire/fund a military - but I consider all of those to be using class features not actually designed for or aimed at such a subsystem (certainly not primarily) to brute-force their way in. That an enchanter can usurp control of a king's military in order to wage a campaign of some kind does not mean every class should be expected to be able to do something similar, for example. Ultimately, some of what you can do should be down to the campaign itself.

True.

But also serves to showcase the issue we are talking about. Basically the same as the topic of items, really.

Edit: I think you know what I mean. Still: Magic items, mass combat rules and stuff like that are all universal things. We could probably come up with a "best items ever" list and create a set of standard equipment based on that, outfit a generic example of each class with it and the result will largely be the same: Less support needed, more spell slots. Same with kingdom, downtime or mass combat rules.

Yes, for any subsystem, D&D is set up so that spells can be used to bypass at least some of it or make it easier.

But I say, so what? Spells have weaknesses of their own. Yes, a wizard can dominate the king to get his army and bypass the "get an army" part of mass combat - but that works right up until he either makes his save or a plucky band of heroes dispels said domination. There are solutions in place without giving everybody access to dominate (or similar).

Yahzi Coyote

2020-09-05, 09:51 PM

I would like my Crusader to be better at running a crusade
I run a sandbox campaign, but if I didn't, I would totally give high-level Fighters the ability to just summon a fistful of leveled fighters, like the Paladins can summon warhorses or wizards can summon monsters.

(In my world I handle that by giving them Leadership for free.)

Bartmanhomer

2020-09-05, 09:52 PM

Because I would like my Crusader to be better at running a crusade than an Expert is, and he currently is not. He's quite good at beating up the enemy's champion, but when it comes to challenges like "raise an army" or "deliver a siege", he's at best marginally more useful than a Warrior is.

But seriously why though? As other members have said the Crusader class is a Tier 3 class which is a solid class that doesn't really need any improvement on this class.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-05, 10:12 PM

For starters, I don't consider raising an army or siegecraft to be the only possible ways to "crusade." A crusade can be championing a very personal or singular cause, and even if you put that aside, one of the key fantasies for a high-level martial PC is to be a "one-man army". Both of these are doable by a Crusader.

And you might have a point, if there was another martial class out there (perhaps the Marshal) that could actually do the "raise an army" thing. But there really isn't.

But even if you stick rigidly to a more traditional/historical definition of "crusade" - for the classes you referenced, do they, really? Yes, you can come up with roundabout ways for the wizard/cleric/druid to "raise an army" - like binding/creating a bunch of monsters, or dominating/convincing the guy who actually has the authority to do so, or breaking WBL to hire/fund a military

I would say that summoning up an army of demons is a pretty direct way to raise an army. And, yes, doing that breaks the tactical game, but it's entirely reasonable on the strategic level. But I didn't say those classes had abilities that raised armies or delivered sieges, I said they had abilities that would be relevant in those minigames. And that much is absolutely true. Divinations allow for the kind of strategic coordination historical armies would kill for. Spells like Fabricate, Create Food and Water, and Wall of Stone ease logistics. Create Weather is a classic army breaker.

Ultimately, some of what you can do should be down to the campaign itself.

Sure. You should certainly be able to go out and recruit the Elves or the Dwarves or the Orcs or the Halflings to join the Grand Alliance, and you should not need any particular character ability to do so. But it doesn't follow from that that there shouldn't be any abilities that effect those subsystems, or that characters not having relevant abilities there is acceptable. Being a Necromancer should get you some undead armies in the event that your campaign starts doing army-level stuff. It should matter that your armies are lead by the Champion of the Heavens instead of "some guy". Those things require giving characters abilities that interact with these subsystems, much as casters already have.

There are solutions in place without giving everybody access to dominate (or similar).

"You can do a thing but it could fail" is not and will never be balanced with "you can't do things".

But seriously why though? As other members have said the Crusader class is a Tier 3 class which is a solid class that doesn't really need any improvement on this class.

The tier system is not the be all and end all of what the game can or should be. It is a measurement of balance as it exists in the 3e system, which is one where the rules for doing non-combat stuff are fuzzy at best. That context, the Crusader is a serviceable class. It still should get something to do outside combat beyond "skill checks", but it works. The issue is that D&D shouldn't just be a series of skirmishes. You can and should build nations and lead armies, as characters do in the source material. And if you're going to do that, characters need abilities that matter in that context, just as they need abilities that matter in combat now.

Florian

2020-09-05, 10:32 PM

But seriously why though? As other members have said the Crusader class is a Tier 3 class which is a solid class that doesn't really need any improvement on this class.

Please note that the Tier system is something that has came up retroactively to analyze the balance within the 3E system, as it is. So it is not overly helpful when talking about what went initially wrong.

So, forget about "crusader, the class" for a moment, so it´s easier to answer the "why?".

It helps when you keep in mind that I mentioned legacy issues earlier. Basically, next to all of D&D suffers a bit from one of the initial design choices. Quite a lot of things were role-played, which is ok, but nearly the same stuff was also put down as "spell".

For example, both statements "I need an army" and "I need a general for my army" can be answered differently based on whether the character is mundane or caster. For mundanes, there is no real answer. Maybe: "Pay gold!" or "role-play how you recruit those!". That's quite different for using mass Animate Dead and Binding some fiend.

Mechalich

2020-09-05, 10:40 PM

I would say that summoning up an army of demons is a pretty direct way to raise an army. And, yes, doing that breaks the tactical game, but it's entirely reasonable on the strategic level.

Ah, but there's the rub. D&D is entirely uncertain if it even wants the strategic level to even exist, much less be something characters actually interact with through anything other than 'find this McGuffin for Important NPC X before Important NPC Y achieves their goals.'

Spellcasters in D&D are provided with abilities that have a clear use on the tactical level but that also, with only a minimal amount of creativity, are crushingly valuable at the strategic level as well, to the point that they rapidly transform the life of any D&D setting where they are fully implemented into something that doesn't resemble the quasi-medieval fantasy world at all.

D&D has never instituted any sort of effective rules set for operations at the strategic level. The closest they ever got was the Birthright Campaign setting in late 2e, but those rules were both terrible and almost completely unplayed (even many 2e fans would be hard-pressed to recall Birthright even existed). Subsequent editions haven't even bothered to try. I totally understand why they haven't too, because trying to engineer a world that utilizes D&D's fully array of high-level spells and powers at strategic scale is a path down which madness lies and the Tippyverse is the least mind-boggling of the results that you output (Planescape, which sort of embraces high-level strategies, voids everything by playing around with infinite numbers, infinite space, and infinite points of light to basically prevent any strategic scale from ever actually existing).

Bringing this back around to the Fighter class, the functional core archetype of the fighter as a character who primarily operates by utilizing main force against any and all problems works reasonably well so long as you remain entirely within the tactical zone. It's still somewhat inflexible and the core version in 3e has mechanical failure points (though these are patchable, the Pathfinder fighter gets most of the way to viability without any major conceptual changes), but most of the bigger problems disappear.

No obviously, the Fighter fails if you let any other member of the party break the tactical game, but the whole game collapses at that point anyway. The fact that various applications of spellcasting can be used to break the tactical game completely aren't problems with the fighter specifically, they're much deeper problems with the system as a whole.

Bartmanhomer

2020-09-05, 10:42 PM

The tier system is not the be all and end all of what the game can or should be. It is a measurement of balance as it exists in the 3e system, which is one where the rules for doing non-combat stuff are fuzzy at best. That context, the Crusader is a serviceable class. It still should get something to do outside combat beyond "skill checks", but it works. The issue is that D&D shouldn't just be a series of skirmishes. You can and should build nations and lead armies, as characters do in the source material. And if you're going to do that, characters need abilities that matter in that context, just as they need abilities that matter in combat now.I think you're thinking of the old computer game called Civilization. It a game where you can build armies and conquering other nations and stuff. A classic and great game by the way. :smile:

Troacctid

2020-09-05, 11:58 PM

I'd like to point out that everyone who has ever raised an army in the real world did so, as far as we know, with no magical powers whatsoever, and furthermore, in this edition of D&D, the Leadership feat allows any character, regardless of class, to easily raise an army, and that most NPC leaders belong primarily to the aristocrat NPC class. So this line of argument is extremely specious.

Bartmanhomer

2020-09-06, 12:30 AM

Please note that the Tier system is something that has came up retroactively to analyze the balance within the 3E system, as it is. So it is not overly helpful when talking about what went initially wrong.

So, forget about "crusader, the class" for a moment, so it´s easier to answer the "why?".

It helps when you keep in mind that I mentioned legacy issues earlier. Basically, next to all of D&D suffers a bit from one of the initial design choices. Quite a lot of things were role-played, which is ok, but nearly the same stuff was also put down as "spell".

For example, both statements "I need an army" and "I need a general for my army" can be answered differently based on whether the character is mundane or caster. For mundanes, there is no real answer. Maybe: "Pay gold!" or "role-play how you recruit those!". That's quite different for using mass Animate Dead and Binding some fiend.

I never say that the Tier System was perfect and I do agree that the Tier system is flawed. Yes, situations can be solved differently when playing mundanes, also being a general in an army can be easily solved by the Leadership and Epic Leadership feat. (if you want to play the epic campaign.) or maybe even without the feat by a very good and persuasive roleplay.

Ignimortis

2020-09-06, 12:42 AM

Aggressively applying WBL to solve your problems rapidly turns the game into something that is based entirely on UMD abuse. Sure, you could use an Amber Amulet of Vermin to compensate for your lack of ability to fly. Alternatively, you could use it to summon CR 7 monsters for 700 GP a pop, completely obliterating any concept of game balance.

I fully agree with this. If a class is supposed to compensate for having no relevant abilities by buying magic items, why is that acceptable when another class can just use their class abilities to do that? Fighters don't get bonus WBL to spend on magic items that fix their problems, casters don't get less WBL because they already can solve their issues on their own. Therefore, perhaps every class should have things that they can do without relying on external sources, because casters already do.

Twofold. First, it sucks as a Fighter to have your role in the party be "buff receptacle". When I play a character, I don't want to have to go around begging the rest of the party to buff me until I can do my job. I just want to be able to do my job. Second, it sucks as Wizard to have to dedicate your spell slots to letting the Fighter do his job. Maybe I built a buff-bot, and that's what I want to be doing, but there are lots of other ways to build Wizards, and demanding that all of them dedicate a portion of their powers to buffing the Fighter instead of doing whatever they want their character to do is unfun.

Also fully agree with this. If teamplay is the name of the game, then Fighter should have a role in the team beyond "it's marginally more effective to buff this character". You shouldn't be relying on other players to consistently focus on you, as if you were the main character and they were just support.

It's also worth pointing out that this is a more serious problem than the casters over-performing. The party is supposed to win. If the Wizard wins extra hard, that is fundamentally okay. If the Fighter doesn't win, that's a real and serious problem.

Also this. There is such a thing as winning too hard, but consistently winning (sometimes barely, but still) is what adventurers do. There is merit in controlling how hard exactly characters can win, but dealing with people being unable to win takes priority.

I'd like to point out that everyone who has ever raised an army in the real world did so, as far as we know, with no magical powers whatsoever, and furthermore, in this edition of D&D, the Leadership feat allows any character, regardless of class, to easily raise an army, and that most NPC leaders belong primarily to the aristocrat NPC class. So this line of argument is extremely specious.

Reality also has no magical enemies, magic items, and no characters above level 5 or 6. Also, Leadership doesn't allow one to raise an army - more of a platoon, at best a company with a high leadership score. Armies of thousands of men are simply out of question for Leadership.

Actually...let's see, how a general would be statted...Maybe a Marshal//Fighter gestalt, level 6 (very high assumptions already, but we're aiming for the maximum), CHA 18 (human maximum), great renown, fairness, having a stronghold, assume that "caused death of other cohorts/followers" doesn't apply to mass combat and only applies to personal actions, so no personal executions and we're only hiring men of great devotion to the cause (same alignment). This brings us to 6+4+2+1+2 = 15 leadership score. That means you have 20 followers of level 1, 2 of level 2, and one of level 3, and also a Cohort of level 4 (6-2). That's not an army, that's a large squad at best.

Since you have to be level 6 to even take Leadership, you can only take Extra Followers once, bringing us up to 46 followers total. That's a platoon, not an army. Wait, is it a Fighter bonus feat? Pretty sure it isn't, but if it is, then you could take it.

Darg

2020-09-06, 02:43 AM

I fully agree with this. If a class is supposed to compensate for having no relevant abilities by buying magic items, why is that acceptable when another class can just use their class abilities to do that? Fighters don't get bonus WBL to spend on magic items that fix their problems, casters don't get less WBL because they already can solve their issues on their own. Therefore, perhaps every class should have things that they can do without relying on external sources, because casters already do.

Also fully agree with this. If teamplay is the name of the game, then Fighter should have a role in the team beyond "it's marginally more effective to buff this character". You shouldn't be relying on other players to consistently focus on you, as if you were the main character and they were just support.

If buffing frontliners to be more effective frontliners isn't a good thing, then games have been doing it wrong for decades. The fighter isn't there to compensate its shortcomings that are only really short comings when the wizard is constantly being pandered to. The fighter is there to increase the variety and number of possible encounters. A group of Wizards would be quite uninteresting and would also have a much thinner fence on which to balance encounters with. Flying wizard gets hit with a dispel and all their buffs are wiped away. Not only might they take falling damage, they don't have any defenses now. Dumb brutes are simple fodder for prepared wizards. Enemies with superior numbers that can think and cast on your level? Not so much. I actively ignore the 4 encounters per day rule. This makes spell selection and rationing much more paramount for success. It also encourages branching out for quantity over quality.

Ignimortis

2020-09-06, 03:01 AM

If buffing frontliners to be more effective frontliners isn't a good thing, then games have been doing it wrong for decades. The fighter isn't there to compensate its shortcomings that are only really short comings when the wizard is constantly being pandered to. The fighter is there to increase the variety and number of possible encounters. A group of Wizards would be quite uninteresting and would also have a much thinner fence on which to balance encounters with. Flying wizard gets hit with a dispel and all their buffs are wiped away. Not only might they take falling damage, they don't have any defenses now. Dumb brutes are simple fodder for prepared wizards. Enemies with superior numbers that can think and cast on your level? Not so much. I actively ignore the 4 encounters per day rule. This makes spell selection and rationing much more paramount for success. It also encourages branching out for quantity over quality.

Marginally is the key word here. It's almost as good to buff a cleric as it is to buff a Fighter. If Fighter had four turns per round and dealt two times the damage of any other class, then they would've been a staple of any group. Just take Shadowrun - groups without either a streetsam or an adept are exceedingly rare, precisely because one of those archetypes brings with them both reliable and overwhelming damage and staying power, which is very hard to match by other means. It does help that they are more like a rogue//fighter gestalt instead of just Fighter, so they can also sneak well, detect things well, and sometimes even talk properly.

Also, if your game extensively features enemies who can cast on the same level as a wizard or a cleric and are played effectively, then what do your fighters even do without support? Not gonna talk about more than 4 fights per day - I never could fit that into the narrative, much less 6+ fights per day. The only time it worked is when the party actually went dungeon crawling, with a huge map and several large floors with lots of wandering enemies.

Psyren

2020-09-06, 03:06 AM

And you might have a point, if there was another martial class out there (perhaps the Marshal) that could actually do the "raise an army" thing. But there really isn't.

I already said this entire narrow/niche concept should be a subsystem rather than baked into any class, so I view no class having it baked in as a feature rather than a buff. If it matters that much to you, use those subsystems or homebrew something.

I would say that summoning up an army of demons is a pretty direct way to raise an army.

Only if your GM is lazy/laissez-faire and completely ignores any cunning, agency, planar politics etc that fiends and their masters might have. Attempting such a thing is supposed to be risky for a reason.

Sure. You should certainly be able to go out and recruit the Elves or the Dwarves or the Orcs or the Halflings to join the Grand Alliance, and you should not need any particular character ability to do so. But it doesn't follow from that that there shouldn't be any abilities that effect those subsystems, or that characters not having relevant abilities there is acceptable. Being a Necromancer should get you some undead armies in the event that your campaign starts doing army-level stuff. It should matter that your armies are lead by the Champion of the Heavens instead of "some guy". Those things require giving characters abilities that interact with these subsystems, much as casters already have.

I never said "there shouldn't be any abilities that affect these subsystems." I said the abilities casters use to do so - typically spells - have drawbacks, and it's the GM's job to make those drawbacks matter. If your army's loyalty to your cause is only as good as the spell you used to create that loyalty (or army), that is a weakness to your strategy that a savvy enemy can and should be able to exploit.

"You can do a thing but it could fail" is not and will never be balanced with "you can't do things".

Depends on how exactly you can fail, and what happens when you do. Most would view failing planar travel and landing in the Far Realm to retire your character as being worse than not having planar travel at all.

Florian

2020-09-06, 03:31 AM

Psyren

2020-09-06, 04:00 AM

@Psyren:

Missing the point. Mechalich aptly threw in the tactical and the strategic level and the massive divide between those two. When it comes to classes, what often gets confused as either "power" or "options", is the distribution of strategic abilities. Hence FTR vs WIZ is only a shorthand for lopsided distribution of strategic abilities, one having zero, the other potentially all (plus access to everything that are general options).

I did read Mechalich's post, particularly this bit:

"Spellcasters in D&D are provided with abilities that have a clear use on the tactical level but that also, with only a minimal amount of creativity, are crushingly valuable at the strategic level as well, to the point that they rapidly transform the life of any D&D setting where they are fully implemented into something that doesn't resemble the quasi-medieval fantasy world at all."

The problem is that those abilities clearly haven't transformed D&D settings away from quasi-medieval fantasy, not as printed anyway. And for me, the far more interesting/creative question is figuring out reasons why that doesn't happen, rather than devolving every unique D&D setting into yet another post-genre Tippyverse. One of the easiest answers being that magic, though powerful, is not as foolproof and risk-free a solution to every possible ill as forums would have one believe.

That doesn't mean class imbalance doesn't exist, or that careless encounter/plot design can't result in martials being sidelined; but for me at least, that imbalance can be brought within levels that most of the game's audience will find tolerable without stretching their suspension of disbelief to the breaking point. Or to put it another way, magic is still superior to not-magic, but not-spellcasters can still contribute to a group's success.

JyP

2020-09-06, 05:36 AM

While I agree that D&D 3 design is to setup every class as effective in combat, which was not true in previous editions :
- in practice it did not work as fighters are seen as subpar compared to other classes in combat
- this design choice is part of the problem for me and explain a bit why fighters are subpar

Okay, now we're getting somewhere. Why is the alternative design choice better?
Let me start with my rant about D&D 3 ^^

<rant>
The alternative design choice would have been to not focus on combat so much in D&D 3, but to also expand other possibilities. By adding a feats system and placement rules as part of core D&D 3 Player's Handbook, it feels to me like AD&D2 Player's Handbook with added AD&D 2 Player's Option : Combat & Tactics on top. For all classes.

As I said previously, you should be open to different ways to pass through monster encounters :

- do a combat, and reduce its hit points to zero (defaut D&D 3 solution, fighter)
- try to sneak past it (thief)
- try to convert it to your point of view (cleric)
- try to mesmerize it with your magic (wizard)

I would have liked very much to have a lot more fluff and rules around skills for thieves, some ways for clerics to convert monsters through faith tools, and even some fluff about arcana, Ars Magica style. More fluff to have a better in-game immersion, to feel the torch smoke, the unknown smells, the strange sounds like I am in my first dungeon again, and goosebumps whenever there's magic incantations.
</rant>
And more on point :

Fighters with a sixth sense whenever danger abounds, fighters who can protect puny wizards, craven thieves, peaceful priests. Fighters who know how to behave tactically before superior ennemies, who are the hero and model for all peasants and would-be adventurers, the future captain and then army leader.

Each main class should have its own way to pass through monster encounters - if the focus is on combat for every class, we miss the true focus which allows every class to shine and be part of a group. And even more dangerous : as the D&D 3 combat system allows players to direct tactics themselves, it means that fighters are robbed of their ability to handle tactics and direct other PCs in combat. Wizards, clerics and thieves should flee and panic in their first combat situation - unlike the fighter which is already hardened and knows what to expect.

Florian

2020-09-06, 07:14 AM

Kelb_Panthera

2020-09-06, 07:50 AM

Yes, because I could also cast them on the Cleric, who is like a Fighter, except instead of getting some bonus feats that are bad, he gets to see the future and summon angels. The reason people crap on "buff the Fighter into viability" is because characters should be viable on their own.

The cleric is like the fighter in its armor proficiency and that's about it. It's less able to hit, has less durability, and has to spend daily resources to do anything other than make normal attacks unless it's willing to sacrifice ability as a caster from its character level feats. He can self-buff to the same degree of combat capability as a fighter but, again, the fighter (or any other warrior archetype class) is a better target for buffing.

And it's not "marginal" past the lowest levels. From as early as level 6, the buffed fighter can make one more attack than the buffed cleric or wizard. The fighter's combat feats that give it options beyond and above "hit it again, eddy" don't just disappear when you start buffing him either.

Casting GMW to save on item costs should be a nice synergy bonus, not something you need to expect to have enough GP to function. Your party's casters could be a Dread Necromancer and a Beguiler, and neither of those guys get GMW. You still need to be able to do your job in that situation.

You gained -one- point of attack bonus over the level appropriate gear. Not even that, if the player decides to simply buy a flat +2 weapon instead of a +1 or +1 <ability> weapon; a decidedly suboptimal choice. Looking ahead in this same post, it's -less- than what -you- are recommending for weapon enhancement; saving you no money at all unless you're willing to let your attack bonus slide from where -you- think it should be.

Yes, using combat maneuvers on a creature that is larger than you, stronger than you, and has a higher BAB than you seems like a winning strategy.

You can have, by level 10, acquired improved <combat maneuver> or a CotWR item for one of the iron heart or setting sun maneuvers that do the same or both. That +4 points negates the size difference and keeps the giant from hitting you back. +8 (for both) negates most of the difference. Toss in a pot of enlarge and you're ahead of the giant.

Not that it's strictly necessary to have an equal or greater bonus. Disarm and trip are both opposed checks. The variance in the dice is great enough that even fairly substantial differences in bonuses don't allow you to simply discount the option altogether.

Take trip: the fighter in my example has a +5 str bonus, the giant has a +10, and the size difference gives it a further +4. It comes out to 1:4 odds in each attempt.

Strength doesn't even come into play for a disarm. Opposed attack rolls with the giant enjoying an extra +4 for being one size larger than the fighter and +4 for his weapon being two-handed. With the bonuses of 17 and 28 that's a bit off of 1:7 odds. Probably want to avoid that without a bit extra from a feat or item. Either imp disarm or an iron heart shirt will get you to about 1:4, the latter allowing you to do damage at the same time.

Similarly, Spring Attack reduces both participants to one attack per round, but the Fire Giant has more HP than you do and attacks for more damage than you do, so that doesn't seem great.

Giving up one iterative to take away two is a good trade. Combined with any method of impeding the giant's mobility may get you to being able to attack without repraisal; tanglefoot bag, net, extant terrain features, etc.

It's probably true that he has more HP than the fighter but we haven't really defined the fighter's offense to be able to say with certainty that it hits harder. Maybe he's wielding a heavy metal fullblade with a pair of strongarm bracers or monkey grip. Maybe he's a charger. Maybe he likes hucking explosive packs when he doesn't like his odds in a straight fight.

Again, being a big stupid fighter is stupid, definitionally.

Overall, a lot of your strategies seem to assume the Fire Giant will just sit there and try to full attack you while you dance around doing something clever. Of course, that's not actually how it's going to behave.

Of course the giant is an intelligent creature capable of using any of the basic combat options. Unless it's been substantially altered from the default stat block, that's all it can do though. They don't natively have an answer to any of the options you may have bought outside of those, either with cash or other build resources.

I note you didn't address kiting with archery.

I didn't skim, I stopped reading when you presented "weapon that is worse than what a Wizard can make for free" as an option I care about.

If you're trying to engage with me honestly then you should actually read the whole bloody thing.

You want at least a +3 weapon. And probably a secondary weapon so you're not dead to anything that can fly. You're simply assuming way to small of a budget for magic items to be realistic, and you're continuing to do so.

Why? Is one or two points of attack bonus or a +2 special ability rather than a +1 ability worth an additional 20% of your wealth at level 10? I wouldn't think so. I'd say that's being downright wasteful.

A +5 composite longbow is 600 gp and specialty arrows are bloody cheap. At level 10, getting your own flight isn't that big a deal either. There are two races listed as explicitly for player use that just got flight at will at 10. A feathered wing graft has its issues but is only 10k and feels like a -way- better use of that money than bumping your pointed stick from +2 to +3.

Realistically, a 10th level character wants +4 stat items, MIC guidelines be damned. That leaves you with just 17k GP after buying your Strength and Constitution boosters. So you can afford a +3 primary weapon, and then you have 8k GP to spend on all of a +saves items, +armor items of whatever combination you want, any consumable buffs, a way of dealing with fliers, and utility. That dog doesn't hunt, but that's what a realistic set of magic items looks like at that level. WBL is simply too low for characters that rely on items to be viable.

You piss away 22k, about 45% of WBL for level 10, on a piddly two points of attack bonus and then complain about not having enough money. Really? Or did you want the same attack bonus and an energy burst or collision enhancement so that you can kill stuff marginally faster -if- your lack of options that you could've spent that 22k addressing allows you to kill it at all?

And to be clear, 22k is the difference between a +2 weapon and +2 belt of giant's strength and the +3 weapon and +4 belt. I could add the 12k difference between a +2 and +4 vest of health to that. It's 10hp when you're probably already at ~80. 34k is 69% of your wealth for +2 to hit, +2 or +3 damage, +1 to fort, and 12% more health. That's an -awful- waste of money.

I'm not underspending. You're overspending and then whining about the consequence of overspending; not having enough gold to expand your options.

JyP

2020-09-06, 09:30 AM

It´s easiest when talking about the "Blessed", the equivalent to Clerics, Crusaders and Paladin. You look up their list of miracles and think "god damned, that would definitely change the setting". Then you notice that they have to build up their "karma pool" to be able to work said miracles, with rules that are deeply anchored in in-setting reality. In a sense, a "Blessed of War" can dish out some major boons in an active war zone, but when war is over, there is next to no Karma to be gained.
I played DSA a lot (in french version in the 80s), and I remember priests having karma... But I don't think there were rules to build up karma then. Could you please point to which DSA book there are Blessed / Karma rules ? in French / English / Deutsch if possible :smallsmile:

PanosIs

2020-09-06, 09:55 AM

Regarding fighter fixes, I'm personally partial to Grod's GitP Fighter Fix #18343.35 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?276280-GitP-Fighter-Fix-18343-3-Ziegander-Grod-Tag-Team-Action!). I'm not a huge fan of the talent pool mechanic, but the general approach to the power level is to my liking.

I have my own version, heavily inspired from the above but without the talent pool system, which I'm using in my homebrew game with relative success (You can find it here (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LaN4w70T42wgw93p7BZDlcO8o3BTjbfMiPEHTbeJ0IQ/edit?usp=sharing)).

For my own game however I have completely revamped the combat feats list, with new mechanics and major changes to feat lists & prerequisites. I think any comprehensive fix for the fighter needs to either (a) Have its own subsystem (Martial Maneuvers, Spheres, Talents, you name it) or (b) Rework the martial feats to provide more viable and meaningful choices for fighters using feats as their main source of customization.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-06, 10:10 AM

to the point that they rapidly transform the life of any D&D setting where they are fully implemented into something that doesn't resemble the quasi-medieval fantasy world at all.

Yeah, like Eberron, Planescape, Dark Sun, and Spelljammer. We've been over this before. D&D has, historically, been totally on board with settings turning into crazy gonzo at the drop of a hat.

I totally understand why they haven't too, because trying to engineer a world that utilizes D&D's fully array of high-level spells and powers at strategic scale is a path down which madness lies and the Tippyverse is the least mind-boggling of the results that you output (Planescape, which sort of embraces high-level strategies, voids everything by playing around with infinite numbers, infinite space, and infinite points of light to basically prevent any strategic scale from ever actually existing).

You ever heard of the Dominions games (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominions:_Priests,_Prophets_and_Pretenders)? It's entirely possible to write a strategic engine for campaigns in settings that are more crazy than D&D.

I'd like to point out that everyone who has ever raised an army in the real world did so, as far as we know, with no magical powers whatsoever

In fact, everyone who did anything ever did so without any magical powers whatsoever. Clearly, we should abolish all the classes that get magic, as they are obviously unrealistic.

the Leadership feat allows any character, regardless of class, to easily raise an army

Yes, that is exactly the problem. Leadership means that your army-raising ability is totally disconnected with your class. That's a problem, because it means no class fulfills the fantasy of "leads an army" better than Expert does. If all necromancy was done through a single feat, no one would have any issue determining that "Necromancer" was not a well-supported character concept.

I already said this entire narrow/niche concept should be a subsystem rather than baked into any class, so I view no class having it baked in as a feature rather than a buff. If it matters that much to you, use those subsystems or homebrew something.

Except classes do have it baked in.The status quo is not that the game is totally divorced from the strategic layer, it is that Fighters are. And not even that the Fighter is, that every class that is not a spellcaster is. Your position seems to be that because you are fine with "sword guy" not having any strategic agency, everyone should be, but that is manifestly not the case.

Only if your GM is lazy/laissez-faire and completely ignores any cunning, agency, planar politics etc that fiends and their masters might have. Attempting such a thing is supposed to be risky for a reason.

Can we not also turn this into a Planar Binding dumpster fire? The spell gives you minions, and doing it on the strategic layer isn't even broken. If the adventure is "go into the temple of Orcus, kill the Orcus cultists, and take their stuff", then Planar Binding is totally broken because it pops out mooks that are individually almost as good as members of your party, and substantially more numerous than them. But if the adventure is "Orcus has called his cultists to war and they are marching on your kingdom", it's totally fine. It just produces troops that are some amount of good at some rate. It's a reasonable thing to do, but it's not at all clear that it's better than other actions one might take at that level like "convince the Elves to join you" or "sabotage the Orcus war machine" or "develop and deploy new engines of war".

The cleric is like the fighter in its armor proficiency and that's about it. It's less able to hit

No, it isn't. (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/divinePower.htm) If you want me to engage with your posts, I propose an alternative strategy of not saying things that are obviously wrong in their literal second sentence.

Anthrowhale

2020-09-06, 10:32 AM

...

Archery + Flight is a much better approach to dismantling a Fire Giant, but if someone wants to play slugger with a fire giant it's quite feasible for a fighter. Pay 1600gp for Polymorph Any Object[Cave Troll(MMIII)] for Str 29, Dex 13, Con 27, +11 Natural armor.

Also buy a suit of masterwork Reinforced (Dragon #358) Segmented (Dragon#358) Thaalud Stone Armor (Anauroch, The Empire of Shade) for Armor Bonus+13, Max Dex Bonus+1, ACP-7, ASF 40% heavy armor, weight 198 lbs, 4450 gp.

Add an amulet of natural armor+1, ring of deflection+1, and enchant the armor with a +1 enhancement bonus. Add a large shield with a +1 enhancement bonus. For a cost of ~12K you have AC 40 so you are only hit when the giant rolls a 20.

Use a fighter with the Sneak Attack ACF. Take as feats Craven, Combat Reflexes, Vexing Flanker, Adaptable Flanker. Wield a medium (-2 attack penalty) Glaive+1 in one hand (cost ~2K). Via a reach weapon + Adaptable Flanker + large size, you flank yourself. Your attack bonus is +10(BAB)+9(Str)-2(wrong size weapon)+4(vexing Flanker)+1(enhancement)=+22 / +17. You inflict 44=1d10(Glaive)+10(Str)+5d6(sneak attack)+10(Craven)+1(enhance) when you hit, which you do almost all the time.

The Fire Giant likely dies quite quickly, and 2/3 of wealth by level remains available.

Darg

2020-09-06, 10:51 AM

Yes, that is exactly the problem. Leadership means that your army-raising ability is totally disconnected with your class. That's a problem, because it means no class fulfills the fantasy of "leads an army" better than Expert does. If all necromancy was done through a single feat, no one would have any issue determining that "Necromancer" was not a well-supported character concept.

Except classes do have it baked in.The status quo is not that the game is totally divorced from the strategic layer, it is that Fighters are. And not even that the Fighter is, that every class that is not a spellcaster is. Your position seems to be that because you are fine with "sword guy" not having any strategic agency, everyone should be, but that is manifestly not the case.

I think it's fine that leading more than a few followers requires a focus on roleplay. It's not like the Leadership feat allows a great monarch to lead his mighty kingdom of less than 200 citizens. To be quite fair, of the base classes only the fighter doesn't really have a roleplay element holding them back from leading large groups of people. Wizards are private, clerics wish to proselytize, etc. The whole game is about roleplay and when it gets disconnected it leads to mechanical bias.

No, it isn't. (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/divinePower.htm) If you want me to engage with your posts, I propose an alternative strategy of not saying things that are obviously wrong in their literal second sentence.

There are things that can make it moot. (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/dispelMagic.htm) Not to mention it negates the effect of bonus HD on BaB.

We can all speculate optimal setups all we want, but that negates the entire premise of a class that has it built in.

Gnaeus

2020-09-06, 01:33 PM

The cleric is like the fighter in its armor proficiency and that's about it. It's less able to hit, has less durability, and has to spend daily resources to do anything other than make normal attacks unless it's willing to sacrifice ability as a caster from its character level feats. He can self-buff to the same degree of combat capability as a fighter but, again, the fighter (or any other warrior archetype class) is a better target for buffing.

And it's not "marginal" past the lowest levels. From as early as level 6, the buffed fighter can make one more attack than the buffed cleric or wizard. The fighter's combat feats that give it options beyond and above "hit it again, eddy" don't just disappear when you start buffing him either.

You gained -one- point of attack bonus over the level appropriate gear. Not even that, if the player decides to simply buy a flat +2 weapon instead of a +1 or +1 <ability> weapon; a decidedly suboptimal choice. Looking ahead in this same post, it's -less- than what -you- are recommending for weapon enhancement; saving you no money at all unless you're willing to let your attack bonus slide from where -you- think it should be.

Why? Is one or two points of attack bonus or a +2 special ability rather than a +1 ability worth an additional 20% of your wealth at level 10? I wouldn't think so. I'd say that's being downright wasteful.

You piss away 22k, about 45% of WBL for level 10, on a piddly two points of attack bonus and then complain about not having enough money..

Here Kelb destroys his own argument, burns it to ash and salts the ground in the village that birthed it. He then uses epic level magic to erase the name of his argument from histories so that no one need ever know it existed.

He realizes that a couple of points of attack bonus are no kind of substitute for abilities worth 20-45% of WBL. A 12th level cleric is 3 points behind a 12th level fighter in BAB, with class abilities that far exceeds the fighters WBL and feats that let it virtually double its own WBL. All of which ignore its abilities to literally create or summon more fighters. Should I haste the fighter 12? Or should I haste the cleric, his 2 fire giant skeletons which are individually about as good as the fighter, his planar ally and I guess also the large earth elemental he summoned before he kicked the door?

Psyren

2020-09-06, 02:28 PM

@Psyren:

Dunno. DSA is the gorilla in the room when it comes to RPGs in Germany. While being extremely on the simulationist side of things, the authors made it clear right from the start that the rules are not an attempt to simulate something, especially not physics, but exist as the interface to the game.

I don't know anything about (or see the relevance of) German RPGs or German RPG tastes :smallconfused:

There´s a rather (in)famous example from the early equivalent to the DMG: While the beast master skills would allow to befriend and tame a crocodile on the fly with a good skill check, a GM should not allow this because you can neither befriend a crocodile nor any animal on the fly, no matter how the general rules for skills work.

It´s easiest when talking about the "Blessed", the equivalent to Clerics, Crusaders and Paladin. You look up their list of miracles and think "god damned, that would definitely change the setting". Then you notice that they have to build up their "karma pool" to be able to work said miracles, with rules that are deeply anchored in in-setting reality. In a sense, a "Blessed of War" can dish out some major boons in an active war zone, but when war is over, there is next to no Karma to be gained.

"Beast master/befriend animals" is a valid class fantasy though, because it's one that operates on the dungeoncrawling scale of the game. Coming across a strange and hostile beast is not a niche scenario, and neither is a nature-focused character wanting to have options besides killing it.

"Raising an army" is not a fantasy that even comes up in the vast majority of D&D games, never mind wanting to be particularly adept at such an uncommon situation, so it works better as a niche subsystem that tables can opt into or ignore.

Transferred to D&D/PF terms: Planar Binding gives the general framework how it should work. Setting rules follow their own logic and override the general framework with the specific rules needed for a particular Binding.

I agree that Planar Binding is a great example, because it contains several text elements that are in there solely to aid DMs in keeping it from altering setting logic. Settings can then layer their own cosmological rules and customs on top of these as needed. I won't go into all of them, but the "dangerous" clause, the "open-ended" prohibition, "impossible demands/unreasonable commands", the ease of breaking the trap from outside, all of that is there so your binder doesn't run roughshod over the setting even with a spell that has this level of potential power.

Except classes do have it baked in.The status quo is not that the game is totally divorced from the strategic layer, it is that Fighters are. And not even that the Fighter is, that every class that is not a spellcaster is. Your position seems to be that because you are fine with "sword guy" not having any strategic agency, everyone should be, but that is manifestly not the case.
...
Can we not also turn this into a Planar Binding dumpster fire? The spell gives you minions, and doing it on the strategic layer isn't even broken. If the adventure is "go into the temple of Orcus, kill the Orcus cultists, and take their stuff", then Planar Binding is totally broken because it pops out mooks that are individually almost as good as members of your party, and substantially more numerous than them. But if the adventure is "Orcus has called his cultists to war and they are marching on your kingdom", it's totally fine. It just produces troops that are some amount of good at some rate. It's a reasonable thing to do, but it's not at all clear that it's better than other actions one might take at that level like "convince the Elves to join you" or "sabotage the Orcus war machine" or "develop and deploy new engines of war".

The mook spell is Summon Monster. You can use Binding for this too but it's not, and isn't supposed to be, a risk-free method of accomplishing this objective.

"Prepare for an oncoming army" is not a concept that the game needs class abilities to facilitate. Despite its roots, D&D is not a war game simulator. Spells can help here, but they can just as easily hinder, or have unintended consequences, unless the GM is too lazy or heedless to invoke any of them.

"Neutralize a small group of cultists" is absolutely something that the game is designed for, and Fighters can contribute meaningfully to that objective just fine.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-06, 03:25 PM

Archery + Flight is a much better approach to dismantling a Fire Giant, but if someone wants to play slugger with a fire giant it's quite feasible for a fighter. Pay 1600gp for Polymorph Any Object[Cave Troll(MMIII)] for Str 29, Dex 13, Con 27, +11 Natural armor.

I believe at the point where you're suggesting "you can just buy castings of Polymorph Any Object" as a reason the Fighter is good at something, you have conceded the argument. In that context, the target you have to compete with isn't "be as good as a Fire Giant" but "be as good as a caster who is allowed to chain Planar Binding", and you just aren't. This is the exact sort of thing I was talking about when I said that solving problems with WBLmancy collapses the game.

I think it's fine that leading more than a few followers requires a focus on roleplay. It's not like the Leadership feat allows a great monarch to lead his mighty kingdom of less than 200 citizens.

That seems a bit circular. We don't need rules for leading large groups because the rules for leading groups don't let you lead large groups?

There are things that can make it moot. (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/dispelMagic.htm) Not to mention it negates the effect of bonus HD on BaB.

It's probably harder to dispel Divine Power than it is to dispel the potions or items the Fighter is relying on. I'm not sure why are care about negating the effect of bonus HD.

"Prepare for an oncoming army" is not a concept that the game needs class abilities to facilitate. Despite its roots, D&D is not a war game simulator. Spells can help here, but they can just as easily hinder, or have unintended consequences, unless the GM is too lazy or heedless to invoke any of them.

Please, tell me the unintended consequences of using Wall of Stone to build fortifications, or using Create Food and Water to feed troops. Players using their abilities to do things is good and desirable. Searching for ways to make it actually bad is bad DMing, plain and simple. Using it as any excuse to not give some characters abilities is some bizarre form of nerd revenge sadism that attempts to punish people for daring to play characters that rely on physical strength.

Florian

2020-09-06, 04:09 PM

@Nigel:

That's the point of talking about the tactical and strategic level and looking at how they overlap.

Psyren

2020-09-06, 07:33 PM

Please, tell me the unintended consequences of using Wall of Stone to build fortifications, or using Create Food and Water to feed troops.

Wall of Stone is crude, and if you want any utility embellishments like battlements, crenellations, and support - the amount you can create is sharply reduced. Nothing in the spell lets you create useful features like arowslits, traps, space for porticulli etc. It's useful as a patch or if you're in a hurry, but if you're trying to make a true fortress, actual masonry/craftsmanship is superior.

As for Create Food and Water - putting aside that you're yet again drifting into a different genre from D&D entirely, the amount of spell slots you'd need to feed an army with this is a colossal opportunity cost/waste of resources. It's far more sensible to just, you know, grow food and use magic for the problems only magic can handle.

Players using their abilities to do things is good and desirable. Searching for ways to make it actually bad is bad DMing, plain and simple.

Ignoring all the drawbacks designers placed into spells, and then complaining that spells don't have enough drawbacks, is bad DMing.

Kelb_Panthera

2020-09-06, 10:41 PM

No, it isn't. (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/divinePower.htm) If you want me to engage with your posts, I propose an alternative strategy of not saying things that are obviously wrong in their literal second sentence.

Divine power is a daily resource. Using persistence cheese doesn't change that and is on a far higher optimization level than I'm using to make my point. I explicitly said a cleric can buff themselves into near equal capability.

Either read and respond to the whole bloody argument or just admit you're not willing to challenge your own bias.

Archery + Flight is a much better approach to dismantling a Fire Giant, but if someone wants to play slugger with a fire giant it's quite feasible for a fighter. Pay 1600gp for Polymorph Any Object[Cave Troll(MMIII)] for Str 29, Dex 13, Con 27, +11 Natural armor.

Also buy a suit of masterwork Reinforced (Dragon #358) Segmented (Dragon#358) Thaalud Stone Armor (Anauroch, The Empire of Shade) for Armor Bonus+13, Max Dex Bonus+1, ACP-7, ASF 40% heavy armor, weight 198 lbs, 4450 gp.

Add an amulet of natural armor+1, ring of deflection+1, and enchant the armor with a +1 enhancement bonus. Add a large shield with a +1 enhancement bonus. For a cost of ~12K you have AC 40 so you are only hit when the giant rolls a 20.

Use a fighter with the Sneak Attack ACF. Take as feats Craven, Combat Reflexes, Vexing Flanker, Adaptable Flanker. Wield a medium (-2 attack penalty) Glaive+1 in one hand (cost ~2K). Via a reach weapon + Adaptable Flanker + large size, you flank yourself. Your attack bonus is +10(BAB)+9(Str)-2(wrong size weapon)+4(vexing Flanker)+1(enhancement)=+22 / +17. You inflict 44=1d10(Glaive)+10(Str)+5d6(sneak attack)+10(Craven)+1(enhance) when you hit, which you do almost all the time.

The Fire Giant likely dies quite quickly, and 2/3 of wealth by level remains available.

Two things:

I'm deliberately staying at the shallow end of the optimization pool to make my case stronger. I'm not showing optimal equipment loadouts or even really addressing the fighter's class features beyond a nod to the fact they can, in fact, contribute to the fighter's ability to win. More on that upcoming. The argument was that a fighter needed his entire WBL just to hit the target numbers and that's patently untrue.

Paying for a (presumably permanent) PAO isn't really a strong argument in favor of the class' ability to stand alone. It's not impossible to do without actually hiring a caster, there are items to produce the effect or an equivalent directly, but it's not cheap and if it's not a permanent item it's not reliable.

Here Kelb destroys his own argument, burns it to ash and salts the ground in the village that birthed it. He then uses epic level magic to erase the name of his argument from histories so that no one need ever know it existed.

He realizes that a couple of points of attack bonus are no kind of substitute for abilities worth 20-45% of WBL. A 12th level cleric is 3 points behind a 12th level fighter in BAB, with class abilities that far exceeds the fighters WBL and feats that let it virtually double its own WBL. All of which ignore its abilities to literally create or summon more fighters. Should I haste the fighter 12? Or should I haste the cleric, his 2 fire giant skeletons which are individually about as good as the fighter, his planar ally and I guess also the large earth elemental he summoned before he kicked the door?

At least 3 points of attack bonus, at least one attack, and half-a-dozen combat-oriented feats. Summoned monsters from summon monster are pitiful combatants.

Fire giant skeletons are CR 7. The guidelines given suggest the two of them together isn't the equal of a 10th level fighter, nevermind a 12th but let's look at the numbers.

BAB 12, str 15 before adjustments.

str becomes 22 for 3 level up boosts and a +4 belt (which is -now- level appropriate)

Weapon's a +2 (+3 is still just -slightly- over the line, even though it's the example the guidelines used)

So that's 12 +6 +2 makes a +20 to-hit before class features or buffs.

If we high-ball the AC with a +4 plate +4 heavy shield, +3 ring, and +3 necklace, that's AC 35 if they have any dex bonus at all. Again, that's not considering any class features or buffs.

Average HP for a con 14 fighter is 94 without so much as a +2 vest of health.

The fire giant skelly has BAB 7 and str 30 with nothing else so that's attack +17. Low for level 12 but its pretty substantial for the CR 7 its supposed to be.

It loses 6 points of natural armor but gains 1 on dex so that's AC 18 if you didn't loot the armor before you raised it. That's kinda trash at level 12. It's not even on-target for the CR 7 it's supposed to be but the DR can offset that somewhat.

It's got 97 HP on average so that's close as long as the fighter doesn't buff his at all.

Unlike the fighter, it has no tactical acumen at all and no special attacks whatsoever.

So in review, the fighter gets more attacks at a higher bonus, is harder to hit, is likely more durable, and almost certainly has more combat options. That looks like -definitely- a better target for buffs than a giant skeleton.

Now the cleric;

Str 14 to start and a +4 belt makes 18

GMW gives us a +3 weapon

BAB is 9.

That's +16 to-hit. 4 points difference.

Same armor class.

About 81 HP before buffs with con 14.

Since strength and con are a secondary and tertiary ability behind wisdom, one of them could easily be lower but I'm being generous.

So at least 20% less likely to hit (probably less still) and with one fewer opportunities also a bit less durable. Still has to burn through daily resources to get combat options and/or catch up that attack bonus and durability gap.

That's at least not a dramatically less potent combatant to buff than the fighter.

So on the numeric front, the gap is not insubstantial in either case.

Now about those combat options.

The skeleton has -nothing-. Absolutely zero choices beyond the standard combat options and some of those are near certain to fail. That's the start and end of it.

The cleric has the basic combat options and can employ any of the options a fighter might purchase by either doing so himself or casting a spell to produce an equivalent effect.

Then there's the fighter. He has the basic combat options, sure. He starts off more likely to succeed at these things than either of the others and has both ample opportunity and incentive to improve upon them further. How many clerics pick up improved trip? Improved disarm? Improved grapple? How about all 3? Maybe he can get the wizard to whack him with heroics.

There are about 200 feats marked as fighter bonus feats and the fighter can pick up as many as 18 of them if he's human and chooses not to take any alternate features. These include options for improving on basic combat options, adding whole new abilities, improving the fighter's mobility and durability, or just being the absolute best at putting his pointed stick into the target or shrugging off somebody trying to do the same to him without having to burn any daily resources. Very few of the things he might choose will even be able to consume all 18 of them.

You can't simply dismiss that as "everybody gets feats" because it's an oversimplification to absurdity. Completing a chain of feats in 1/3 as many levels isn't nothing and neither is being able to complete more than one chain. No other class can do that. The fighter is a feat gestalt; it is more than the sum of its parts.

Now on the subject of minions; anybody can do that. The casters can do it with spells, sure, but leadership is an option so are hirelings and there are even items like figurines of wondrous power and or an aberrant sphere. In the later levels, you can get a rod of the dead and undead controlling armor if that's your thing. Never mind the infamous candle of invocation.

If a fighter's abilities are nothing special because anyone can get them, so are a wizard's and cleric's. They just save a buck getting there.

Darg

2020-09-06, 11:53 PM

That seems a bit circular. We don't need rules for leading large groups because the rules for leading groups don't let you lead large groups?

They are followers, not necessarily combatants. If you want an army you have 3 options: be rich enough to hire men and lead them in escalating warfare bringing victory and extra troops as tribute, found a nation, or take one over.

It's probably harder to dispel Divine Power than it is to dispel the potions or items the Fighter is relying on. I'm not sure why are care about negating the effect of bonus HD.

Inspire Greatness grants 2 bonus HD. This gives the fighter a total of +2 BAB and +2 AB. At level 9 when this comes online it grants the fighter an extra iterative. In a group with casters the fighter most likely won't have to worry about potions except as a plan b.

Ignimortis

2020-09-07, 02:52 AM

Inspire Greatness grants 2 bonus HD. This gives the fighter a total of +2 BAB and +2 AB. At level 9 when this comes online it grants the fighter an extra iterative. In a group with casters the fighter most likely won't have to worry about potions except as a plan b.

It's very questionable if those Hit Dice come with any BAB advancement (what kind of Hit Dice are these? They aren't racial or class hit dice, therefore we don't know what BAB those are supposed to add). As far as I see, the bonus to attacks is coded further on as just +2 competence bonus to attack rolls, which is nice, but doesn't grant you extra attacks.

Anthrowhale

2020-09-07, 07:59 AM

...

I don't have a strong sense for deep vs. shallow end optimization here. Core only? Not that, because that leaves PAO. Something else?

W.r.t. PAO in particular, the game says it is supposed to be routinely available (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/goodsAndServices.htm#spellcastingAndServices). The difference between using spellcasting services and using spellcasters to enchant items is ... robustness? 1600 gp is enough for caster level 20 which is reasonably robust at ECL 10. Higher is of course possible.

W.r.t. use of class features, almost all of the damage in that particular case was due to the Fighter class.

Quertus

2020-09-07, 08:09 AM

A Wizard has a minimum of 43 spells known at 20th level, not counting cantrips, and it scales up into the hundreds or thousands.

A Cleric or Druid each have hundreds or thousands of spells at their fingertips.

Even the Sorcerer has 34 spells known.

If you boosted the power level of every feat to be level appropriate for the level you got it, or even just straight up turned feats into spells, the Fighter would still be far behind on versatility. 11 bonus feats is not enough to compete even when you take the relative power of feats out of the equation. Each feat would need to be the equivalent of 3-4 spells, which is just silly.

Why is that silly?

Improved trip: 3/day, the Fighter may ignore the -4 penalty…

Now it's perfectly balanced with casting 3-4 spells.

Oh, you want equal versatility? OK…

Rip Reality: 3/day, the Fighter may rip a hole in reality. This hole is permanent, non-magical, and acts as hard full cover.

Reality Rip Relocation: 3/day, the Fighter may, as a full-round action (requiring a concentration check as spells if struck etc) to relocate a Reality Rip they created within close range to anywhere within close range. LoS & LoE apply.

Twin Reality Rip: 3/day, the Fighter may rip a permanent hole in reality, connecting it to anywhere within close range. LoS, LoE, movement, etc treat the two squares as though they are the same square.

Resonant Recruitment: 3/day, as a full-round action (subject to concentration…) the Fighter may attempt to meditate to find someone who would be amenable to assisting in their current situation, and pull them to their location through an adjacent reality rip. (See table)

Roving Reality Rip: 3/day, when the Fighter would make another Reality Rip, they may designate that it is "roving", able to be carried by the Fighter (not unlike a tower shield). The rip may only be carried by physical movement - teleporting, or traveling to another plane or through a Rift causes the Roving Rift to remain behind, as though the Fighter had performed a "drop an item" action.

This way, the *core* Fighter doesn't have such abilities, but those who *want* Fighters who can rip holes in reality can have their way. Win/win?

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-07, 09:15 AM

Wall of Stone is crude, and if you want any utility embellishments like battlements, crenellations, and support - the amount you can create is sharply reduced.

It's still massively faster than comparable non-magical labor. Yes, the spell does not instantly make fortresses. But that doesn't make it useless, it makes it of some finite amount of use, which is still by definition larger than the zero use the Fighter is providing.

Nothing in the spell lets you create useful features like arowslits, traps, space for porticulli etc.

The stone may be in "almost any shape you desire." A list of specific exemptions are then carved out which change how much wall you get. Any other shape is therefore totally fine.

As for Create Food and Water - putting aside that you're yet again drifting into a different genre from D&D entirely

It's not me doing it, it's the designers who wrote a spell that solves logistics problems.

the amount of spell slots you'd need to feed an army with this is a colossal opportunity cost/waste of resources.

You can't personally feed an army. But one 5th level Cleric feeds 15 people per casting, and can cast two or three times per day. That means with Clerics attached at the platoon level, your army doesn't need supply lines. Again, that is massively better than anything you can get out of Fighters.

Ignoring all the drawbacks designers placed into spells, and then complaining that spells don't have enough drawbacks, is bad DMing.

Drawback-based balancing is bad design. And most spells don't have drawbacks. Even Planar Binding's vaunted "drawbacks" are basically "this spell can cause you, an adventurer, to have future adventures". Wow, big deal there, seeing as my career is having adventures.

Divine power is a daily resource. Using persistence cheese doesn't change that and is on a far higher optimization level than I'm using to make my point.

Oh, I see. We're defining anything that makes you wrong as cheese. Persistent Spell is bog standard Cleric optimization. Frankly, more standard than the "bag of potions" Fighter you're pushing, and not really any cheesier. The reality is simply that the Cleric is as good at fighting as the Fighter, and also gets to see the future and summon angels.

Either read and respond to the whole bloody argument or just admit you're not willing to challenge your own bias.

Either start your posts on firm ground, or accept that people are going to sometimes assume you're not making a case that's worth engaging with.

If a fighter's abilities are nothing special because anyone can get them, so are a wizard's and cleric's. They just save a buck getting there.

You cannot feasibly replicate the output of casters from WBL in a sustained way. They simply get too many spell slots. What you can do is buy scrolls that are powerful enough to end encounters for less than the loot you get from winning encounters, but since that strategy can be successfully executed by an Expert, I don't really consider it to implicate class balance in any meaningful way.

They are followers, not necessarily combatants. If you want an army you have 3 options: be rich enough to hire men and lead them in escalating warfare bringing victory and extra troops as tribute, found a nation, or take one over.

Sure, those are the options you have now. Why not other options like "raise legions of the dead" or "summon armies of demons" or "rally troops to the banner of a holy war"?

Inspire Greatness grants 2 bonus HD. This gives the fighter a total of +2 BAB and +2 AB. At level 9 when this comes online it grants the fighter an extra iterative. In a group with casters the fighter most likely won't have to worry about potions except as a plan b.

Again, I'm not optimistic about a model of the Fighter being good that depends on other characters. What about all the parties where there isn't a Bard (which is to say: most parties)? Or the Bards that go Bardblade or something and never get Inspire Greatness?

I don't have a strong sense for deep vs. shallow end optimization here. Core only? Not that, because that leaves PAO. Something else?

Generally speaking, when people talk about restricting optimization they mean "my tricks are legal and your tricks are banned". As we can see from Kelb rejecting Persistent Spell (and, to be fair, to some degree from me rejecting PAO).

W.r.t. use of class features, almost all of the damage in that particular case was due to the Fighter class.

Sure. But surely you could have gotten more damage by instead picking a different, better PAO form, even if you happened to be a Warrior instead of a Fighter. Like a Great Wyrm Gold Dragon or something.

Florian

2020-09-07, 09:23 AM

Win/win?

Counter proposal.

The issue can never be resolved, so why try stupid workarounds? Back to the drawing board it is.

So, by now, we know what the main issues are, right?

So, let's start with a bunch of core classes, martial-types only, with abilities that are focused on and balanced around the tactical level.

Enter a feat chain: Spellcasting (Basic, Expert, Advanced), granting access to one type (arcane, divine, Bardic, Shadow) and one method (Spells Known, Fixed List, Spells Prepared), granting access to ranger-style, bard-style or wizard-style casting. Spell are strictly on the tactical level only.

Beyond that we work out some sub-systems, with Ritual Magic / High Arcana, Statecraft, Warcraft and such focussing on the strategic level.

Psyren

2020-09-07, 11:32 AM

It's still massively faster than comparable non-magical labor. Yes, the spell does not instantly make fortresses. But that doesn't make it useless, it makes it of some finite amount of use, which is still by definition larger than the zero use the Fighter is providing.
...
The stone may be in "almost any shape you desire." A list of specific exemptions are then carved out which change how much wall you get. Any other shape is therefore totally fine.

I never said Wall of Stone is "useless" :smallconfused: I said taking the magical shortcut has disadvantages that they intentionally built into the spell. "Crude" for example, by definition means that fine detail and feats of engineering are not possible. It literally would have been less text/easier for them to not put in all these caveats and downsides into spells.

It's not me doing it, it's the designers who wrote a spell that solves logistics problems.

I never said it doesn't solve problems either. It's quite useful if you're pressed for time, but that doesn't mean that what you get won't have any downsides to it.

You can't personally feed an army. But one 5th level Cleric feeds 15 people per casting, and can cast two or three times per day. That means with Clerics attached at the platoon level, your army doesn't need supply lines. Again, that is massively better than anything you can get out of Fighters.

Two questions: how many 5th level clerics do you think there are in a city, and how many soldiers do you think are in a platoon (never mind a whole army)?
Yes, magical MREs can certainly help, but you still need actual food production to branch out into this genre that the game wasn't designed to support.

Drawback-based balancing is bad design.

No, it's not. And Planar Binding's drawbacks are definitely not just "have more adventures." If you try to use it as a crutch (or anything else for that matter), expect that crutch to be knocked out from under you sometimes.

Efrate

2020-09-07, 12:59 PM

TBF unless you are in Faerun, just bind a bunch of devils. They explicitly do NOT ever seek revenge, nor their superiors because being bound means you are weak and you deserved it. No risk, all reward as far as the consequences. That being said, it sidesteps nearly every complaint about PB 100% by raw. Like it not it is there.

As far as being polymorphed permanently into a more useful combat form that just highlights a weaknesses. If you need that to remain competitive then there is a problem. WBL exists true, but no caster has to do so to remain relevant. I would also consider that reasonably mid op at the lowest, and then all the RP consequences of being a troll in a normal city come into play. This is where wbl mancy falls apart. It can let you do anything but anyone could do it, so you kind of need to divorce it from a class (and this is about classes and features) since an expert or anyone could do all of it as well. It doesn't help the discussion.

As far as strategic level, there isn't a lot of specific stuff for any class. That's a subsystem (heroes of battle/mini handbook) that any characters can do things to access, and while casters can take options to assist in that, you can just hire a group of extra planar mercenaries that will win a war for you pretty easily. Something with flying, Dr 10/magic, and that does not need to eat or sleep, 20 or so of those will destroy entire armies of mundanes with next to no threat to themselves. Again, get devils so they are bound by their word and you do not have worries.

The entire setting goes tippy or falls apart because of magic and it's consequences from being in common use if you take it outside of anything other than adventurers doing adventurer things in dungeons on a smaller tactical scale.

That's a system issue, like it or not the setting does NOT work if you go beyond the surface of it.

And the fighters problem is if you try to go beyond that he has nothing, whereas a caster will have something, but even if you keep it tactical, he lacks any meaningful features to drive the narrative outside of I hit it with a sword again that are from his class chasis.

He is fine as guy kicking the door in inside of a dungeon of some monstrous humanoids that are evil and their lives and property are forfeit cause they are not human/elf/etc. Toe to toe with party support vs. Cr appropriate foes as a wall of meat. That is his identity, and he does an okay job of that. That simplicity and lack of options is what some people want. And in that niche he is fine. Some players, a lot of players going by 5e numbers (different system I know but the data would probably hold in 3.5), want that more than anything. Champion is the most popular fighter sub class last I checked.

We here on the forums want a LOT more from the game than that I imagine, and we are a minority of a minority, but the fighter is a simple uninteresting class that is overshadowed by a lot of other classes. And Thats okay. It's never going to be a t1 option without essentially becoming a super gish. You can borrow some maneuvers, increase skillpoints and skill variety and bake those into the class to bring it up to t3, but just be a warblade and it does most of that by itself.

My 2 cp.

Troacctid

2020-09-07, 01:04 PM

Efrate

2020-09-07, 01:13 PM

Yes the ones I have run are several tactical skirmishes that happen over a course of n turns, on turn 1, 4, 7, 12, etc. With nearly everything abstracted. A profression engineer check to build fortifications that slow the encounters by a turn or so, a perform check for a morale boost so conscript group X survives another round, etc. You run from encounter 1 to 2 to 4 or whatever to try to do as much as you can.

Florian

2020-09-07, 01:23 PM

I'm not sure why battles are supposed to be on the strategic scale exactly. Almost every adventure I've done that involved preparing a town against an approaching army—and you might be surprised how many of these there are in organized play—either took place strictly on a tactical scale or had the strategic elements abstracted into skill challenges where casting a spell gave you an automatic success, but wasn't worth any more points than e.g. making a successful Perform check to improve morale. And even in the latter case, you always seem to end up in a tactical skirmish at the end, or you have tactical encounters in other sections of the module.

So, basically small fry.

Take a look at something like Wrath of the Righteous, that deals with invalid a whole country and taking down a demonic incursion as well as a bunch of demon lords. That's the scale that even a Cloud of Vengeance is pretty insignificant, if you get my meaning.

Gnaeus

2020-09-08, 07:54 AM

At least 3 points of attack bonus, at least one attack, and half-a-dozen combat-oriented feats. Summoned monsters from summon monster are pitiful combatants.

Fire giant skeletons are CR 7. The guidelines given suggest the two of them together isn't the equal of a 10th level fighter, nevermind a 12th but let's look at the numbers.

BAB 12, str 15 before adjustments.

str becomes 22 for 3 level up boosts and a +4 belt (which is -now- level appropriate)

Weapon's a +2 (+3 is still just -slightly- over the line, even though it's the example the guidelines used)

So that's 12 +6 +2 makes a +20 to-hit before class features or buffs.

If we high-ball the AC with a +4 plate +4 heavy shield, +3 ring, and +3 necklace, that's AC 35 if they have any dex bonus at all. Again, that's not considering any class features or buffs.

Average HP for a con 14 fighter is 94 without so much as a +2 vest of health.

The fire giant skelly has BAB 7 and str 30 with nothing else so that's attack +17. Low for level 12 but its pretty substantial for the CR 7 its supposed to be.

It loses 6 points of natural armor but gains 1 on dex so that's AC 18 if you didn't loot the armor before you raised it. That's kinda trash at level 12. It's not even on-target for the CR 7 it's supposed to be but the DR can offset that somewhat.

It's got 97 HP on average so that's close as long as the fighter doesn't buff his at all.

Unlike the fighter, it has no tactical acumen at all and no special attacks whatsoever.

So in review, the fighter gets more attacks at a higher bonus, is harder to hit, is likely more durable, and almost certainly has more combat options. That looks like -definitely- a better target for buffs than a giant skeleton.

Now the cleric;

Str 14 to start and a +4 belt makes 18

GMW gives us a +3 weapon

BAB is 9.

That's +16 to-hit. 4 points difference.

Same armor class.

About 81 HP before buffs with con 14.

Since strength and con are a secondary and tertiary ability behind wisdom, one of them could easily be lower but I'm being generous.

So at least 20% less likely to hit (probably less still) and with one fewer opportunities also a bit less durable. Still has to burn through daily resources to get combat options and/or catch up that attack bonus and durability gap.

That's at least not a dramatically less potent combatant to buff than the fighter .

You don’t get to compare the fighter to them one on one. The cleric gets them all together. So by your math the skeletons have 196 hp. The cleric has 81. Thats 278 versus 94. Without the elemental or outsider. Both of whom are chunky. The fighter controls 9 squares including his own. The giants and the elemental control 108. Plus the cleric and the outsider. The fighter doesn’t get more attacks. He gets quite a bit less, because he isn’t compared with one of those. He is compared with all of them.

So on the numeric front, the gap is huge

Now about those combat options.

The skeleton has -nothing-. Absolutely zero choices beyond the standard combat options and some of those are near certain to fail. That's the start and end of it.

The cleric has the basic combat options and can employ any of the options a fighter might purchase by either doing so himself or casting a spell to produce an equivalent effect.

Then there's the fighter. He has the basic combat options, sure. He starts off more likely to succeed at these things than either of the others and has both ample opportunity and incentive to improve upon them further. How many clerics pick up improved trip? Improved disarm? Improved grapple? How about all 3? Maybe he can get the wizard to whack him with heroics.

There are about 200 feats marked as fighter bonus feats and the fighter can pick up as many as 18 of them if he's human and chooses not to take any alternate features. These include options for improving on basic combat options, adding whole new abilities, improving the fighter's mobility and durability, or just being the absolute best at putting his pointed stick into the target or shrugging off somebody trying to do the same to him without having to burn any daily resources. Very few of the things he might choose will even be able to consume all 18 of them.

You can't simply dismiss that as "everybody gets feats" because it's an oversimplification to absurdity. Completing a chain of feats in 1/3 as many levels isn't nothing and neither is being able to complete more than one chain. No other class can do that. The fighter is a feat gestalt; it is more than the sum of its parts. .

Were you aware that you can do combat maneuvers without feats? Even if you have improved grapple their grapple check is as good as yours. Actually the 2 giant skeletons are quite a bit better at grappling than the fighter. Because they can grapple 2 different things. Or grapple something and still full attack it or something else with a great sword. Tell me, which feat let’s you do that? Actually, that earth elemental is pretty good at bull rush. Large, strong, has both relevant feats. The cleric’s melee attack routine looks like:
Elemental bull rushes enemy into position, provoking 4 AOOs from team cleric.
Fire giant 1 makes touch attack. Grapples
Fire giant 2 full attacks grappled target (or trips it. Why not?)
Cleric full attacks grappled target
Couatl planar ally casts plane shift (at Will) on grappled target.

I’m unaware of the feat a 12th level fighter has that lets him do that. (I’m going to ignore the bit about 18 feats. Because then I have 9th level spells, and there is no fighter option remotely comparable to Gate).

Oh, and the fire giants were only what we were discussing. There’s no reason the cleric can’t have a literal grapple monster. Or something nasty like rebuked incorporeals. What’s the feat that lets the fighter make a bunch of touch attacks that do strength damage? Is it the beginning of a fight? I guess the whole posse is invisible, since the planar ally gets that at will, so that’s +2 to hit and enemy is flat footed on our opening beat down. Is there a fighter feat for that? No, he only gets “combat options”.

Now let’s try some REAL combat options. How about “for duration of combat, any undead struck makes a will save or is destroyed”. Or “I automatically see through all the illusions around the battlefield so I can direct my army to attack the enemy beguiler while you full attack an image”. Or “I make myself immune to enemy grapples or level drain before I run up to tank”? Heck, you know what’s a good combat option? Not failing any will save that comes my way. You can’t even manage “I’ll block the monsters coming from the East and West corridors at the same time while also contributing to the main fight in front of us.”

Now on the subject of minions; anybody can do that. The casters can do it with spells, sure, but leadership is an option so are hirelings and there are even items like figurines of wondrous power and or an aberrant sphere. In the later levels, you can get a rod of the dead and undead controlling armor if that's your thing. Never mind the infamous candle of invocation.

If a fighter's abilities are nothing special because anyone can get them, so are a wizard's and cleric's. They just save a buck getting there.

First off, can they? Is there a bar a 12th character can walk into anywhere, let alone everywhere, and say, “barkeep! I’d like one ale, 2 fanatically loyal 15hd giant warriors, a 9th level sorcerer with a bunch of extra spell likes and HP, and an endless stream of mooks! No one who will demand a share of treasure mind!” We could both cancel out leadership. But the only thing you could do with leadership that is REMOTELY comparable is get a 10th level tier 1 caster to be a buff/summons bot, but then I just have a free wizard to spam haste on my preexisting army. Heck, charisma is even a useful stat for clerics. Generally a dump stat for fighters.

They just save a buck getting there. Uhm, YEAH. That’s the point. Where in your fighter WBL did you lay out the expenditure for your 15th level hirelings? You spent a ton of $$$ on expensive armor, shield, weapon. I have GMW. Magic Vestment, so better outcome for less GP. (Actually, I can GMW the skeletons swords also, making them match your attack bonus, but anyway...) My stats are actually better than yours, because I can craft a belt of physical perfection +6 for under 40k AKA less than the cost of your AC I get free. My gear is cheaper, my buffs are both free and better. My minions are free. And the cleric hasn’t even cracked a non core book yet. Because fighter gets 12 feats from all sources combined but Cleric has about 1/2 of every combat spell from every book in play.

Kelb_Panthera

2020-09-08, 08:46 AM

Oh, I see. We're defining anything that makes you wrong as cheese.

No, I'm calling cheese something that's near universally acknowledged as an unexpected and/or unintended consequence of combining material from multiple splats. You'll notice that none of the methods that allow you to use persistent spell before level 6 spell slots are available or on higher than level 3 spells are in the same source as any version of persistent spell.

You'll also notice that what I said was not "no cheese allowed" but that even if you use this particular cheese you're just burning a different (almost certainly more limited) daily resource.

Persistent Spell is bog standard Cleric optimization.

In online circles, sure. Even here though, I have less of a problem with it than a lot of others do. It being well known doesn't make it not cheese and it doesn't really make it "bog standard" either. You're looking at 2 source books and use of at least two uses of daily resources to get a basic function of the class you're claiming is "useless."

Frankly, more standard than the "bag of potions" Fighter you're pushing, and not really any cheesier.

More standard and less cheesy than the thing that will happen incidentally by the GM simply following the game's given guidelines. That's one hell of an assertion. 1/3 of all "minor magic items" generated by the tables in the DMG are potions, my dude. Suggesting the player actually sometimes use the things doesn't seem so much like any serious degree of optimization as it does simply playing the game.

The reality is simply that the Cleric is as good at fighting as the Fighter,

He can be if you work at it; selecting feats and spells and burning off daily resources to ape basic features gets you to a place similar to where the fighter starts. You're already at a 4th level slot (DP), 3 feats, and probably another 4th level slot (extended GMW) to do what the fighter is doing with a pointed stick before he's selected his first bonus feat.

and also gets to see the future and summon angels.

If you're not calling them, don't bother. Summoned monsters are trash combatants. Nature's ally is the "summon a fighting critter" spell and those are still not as dangerous as any warrior class PC.

As for seeing the future, that's a flat "no." He can ask his sky-daddy about the future and the GM can make a best estimate as to how sky-daddy responds, with the distinct possibility if not high probability of him being downright wrong or having to now railroad you into the future you've divined.

Either start your posts on firm ground, or accept that people are going to sometimes assume you're not making a case that's worth engaging with.

You don't have to assume my case. I'm laying it out for you. Assuming it rather than reading it is either lazy, dishonest, or some combination of the two. In all three cases, it robs your opinion on the matter of any weight. You're not just failing to convince me, you're making your arguments look pitifully weak to anyone else reading them too.

You cannot feasibly replicate the output of casters from WBL in a sustained way. They simply get too many spell slots. What you can do is buy scrolls that are powerful enough to end encounters for less than the loot you get from winning encounters, but since that strategy can be successfully executed by an Expert, I don't really consider it to implicate class balance in any meaningful way.

In fact, you can. The fighter isn't necessarily the best chassis for it, I'll admit. I give you the wizard replacement stick:

The key to this trick lies in the artificer infusion spell storing item. This little dandy will, upon being cast and making a successful UMD check, allow you to make a target item into what is effectively a wand with a single charge of any spell that is 4th level or lower. Think about that; any spell of 4th level or lower. Now remember how many partial casters and prestige classes have spells from higher levels discounted to 4th level or lower, like the paladin and trapsmith.

If you can make strong use of UMD with your character, you can simply get spell storing item on a staff and call it a day. That's 50 spells of the wielder's choice from an extraordinarily broad selection.

If you're not so good at UMD, then we can bring in the intelligent item rules; an intelligent item can both have its own skill ranks and activate its own abilities. Such an item would certainly have a strong ego and should be made by the character if at all possible but a good will save isn't too hard to come by and there are several options for a non-caster to craft magic items.

The XP cost in any case is not insubstantial but it's awfully hard to argue it isn't worth it.

Generally speaking, when people talk about restricting optimization they mean "my tricks are legal and your tricks are banned". As we can see from Kelb rejecting Persistent Spell (and, to be fair, to some degree from me rejecting PAO).

I never mentioned restricting optimization. I said I was deliberately holding back because it makes my points stronger. I even made passing mention of the "bog standard" charger option in one of my posts as one of a number of options for dealing with the fire giant you brought up. You chose not to address it, if you bothered to read it at all.

I called persistence cheese for being cheese but I explicitly acknowledged its use case. I didn't say it was invalid.

I don't have a strong sense for deep vs. shallow end optimization here. Core only? Not that, because that leaves PAO. Something else?

Generally speaking, fewer sources required tends to mean shallower as does less necessary use of cross-referencing. Stuff that requires substantial lateral thinking and stuff that deliberately bypasses obviously intended limitations tends toward deeper level optimization whether it crosses into cheese territory or not.

Using a spell to "permanently" change your race to something that would otherwise carry a substantial number of racial HD and/ or LA is definitely somewhere a lot deeper than just buying level appropriate equipment for a character of your class. It's arguably deeper than using divine metamagic with persistent spell.

W.r.t. PAO in particular, the game says it is supposed to be routinely available. The difference between using spellcasting services and using spellcasters to enchant items is ... robustness? 1600 gp is enough for caster level 20 which is reasonably robust at ECL 10. Higher is of course possible.

Routine is probably stretching things. Even in a metropolis there's only even odds of there even being a wizard that could cast it, regardless of price. Dirt cheap if you can find it but finding it isn't so simple. Since you're talking one of only 2 people in an average metropolis and such a profound effect, I'd be very surprised if a player were allowed to do that without it becoming an entire side-quest in any but the most high-op games, if it's allowed at all. I strongly suspect it wouldn't be at most tables.

W.r.t. use of class features, almost all of the damage in that particular case was due to the Fighter class.

You can understand how something that -remarkably- specific says more about that particular build than the fighter class as a whole, I hope? To defend the class as a whole, you really want to paint in fairly broad strokes and minimal effort.

It probably doesn't help that I'm having to make several arguments at once:

First, I'm having to argue that WBL is not inadequate for warrior classes. The incredibly fluid nature of the cost/power ratio makes that difficult.

Second, I'm having to argue that the fighter's ability to combine abilities constitutes something unique even if most of the things he's combining aren't.

Third, I had to argue that the fighter -does- have unique abilities. Pretty sure I nailed that one with the prior link. I'll now go ahead and explicitly mention the ability to actually take weapon supremacy -and- all of its prerequisites without having to multiclass and without giving up all of his feats to get there. It's not the most exciting set of abilities but it's at least strictly superior to the barbarian's rage.

Psyren

2020-09-08, 09:57 AM

Kelb_Panthera

2020-09-08, 10:49 AM

You don’t get to compare the fighter to them one on one.

Sure I do. One creature is one creature. As I said at the end of the previous post, anybody can have minions. The same minions, in fact. The fighter wants a couple skellies, he buys the rod of the dead and undead controlling armor/shield or both and he gets just as many as the cleric; as many as he has bodies worth making one from.

Were you aware that you can do combat maneuvers without feats?

Of course. I mentioned that use case upthread.

Even if you have improved grapple their grapple check is as good as yours.

As long as they can actually grab, sure. With the trash AC, the AoO is going to ruin most attempts before grapple mods even come up.

Or grapple something and still full attack it or something else with a great sword. Tell me, which feat let’s you do that?

Scorpion's grasp; sandstorm. It gives the character most of the benefits of the improved grab ability, including the ability to hold an enemy in a grapple while not being considered to be grappled yourself. It's not quite as good as being two characters but that's why you get minions. :smallamused:

Actually, that earth elemental is pretty good at bull rush. Large, strong, has both relevant feats.

Actually it doesn't. That's the huge earth elemental. It has a 6 point advantage over the fighter, assuming the fighter doesn't have improved bull rush himself or any of the other options available to improve strength and strength based checks, of which there are myriad.

Now at 12 you could have summoned a huge elemental but that's your highest level ability to be able to make a decent bull rush for barely over a minute and not much else. Its other numbers are nothing special and it's nigh useless against flying foes. You could switch to an air elemental in that case but there's no reason a fighter shouldn't have picked up flight by now and is better at everything except grappling with standard equipment. The HP difference all but disappears if the fighter adds a vest of health.

The cleric’s melee attack routine looks like:
Elemental bull rushes enemy into position, provoking 4 AOOs from team cleric.
Fire giant 1 makes touch attack. Grapples
Fire giant 2 full attacks grappled target (or trips it. Why not?)
Cleric full attacks grappled target
Couatl planar ally casts plane shift (at Will) on grappled target.

Elemental tries to bull rush. Hope it's a relatively small target.
Fire giant gets punched in the face by whatever it is because laughable AC versus AoO.
Fire giant 2 makes full attack that does "meh" damage against the enemy's likely extant DR given its swinging at something CR 12.
Cleric full attacks and does meh damage because of lousy output and difficulty in hitting unless he's spent a substantial portion of his dailies on correcting those problems.
Couatl -tries- to planeshift target with a save DC lower than your own spells.

So, looking at the CR 12s from the SRD, I hope that's either a roper or a kolyarut, else this isn't gonna go very well.

I’m unaware of the feat a 12th level fighter has that lets him do that.

It's not a fighter bonus feat but there's always touchstone (catalogues of enlightement) and its greater power giving him access to the summoning domain and its spells. Between that and the afformentioned undead minion gear you're looking at pretty much the same thing except the fighter does better than the cleric with his full attack.

(I’m going to ignore the bit about 18 feats. Because then I have 9th level spells, and there is no fighter option remotely comparable to Gate).

You know, other than gate; it being available to anyone willing to spend a feat and take a trip.

Oh, and the fire giants were only what we were discussing. There’s no reason the cleric can’t have a literal grapple monster. Or something nasty like rebuked incorporeals. What’s the feat that lets the fighter make a bunch of touch attacks that do strength damage? Is it the beginning of a fight? I guess the whole posse is invisible, since the planar ally gets that at will, so that’s +2 to hit and enemy is flat footed on our opening beat down. Is there a fighter feat for that? No, he only gets “combat options”.

If you expect anyone to argue that a single character of any class is better than an entire squad of minions, I don't know why you're directing it at me.

If you expect me to simply accept minions as a caster specific ability that only they can use, you shouldn't hold your breath.

Now let’s try some REAL combat options. How about “for duration of combat, any undead struck makes a will save or is destroyed”.

Disruption blunted arrows or sling-stones; dirt cheap. Disruption primary weapon if undead are expected to be prominent for a while.

Or “I automatically see through all the illusions around the battlefield so I can direct my army to attack the enemy beguiler while you full attack an image”.

Pierce magical concealment is a fighter bonus feat. Ring of see invisibility covers what the feat doesn't.

Or “I make myself immune to enemy grapples or level drain before I run up to tank”?

Hey look, a ring and an armor ability.

Just how many standard actions do you think you're going to get to make in a given combat anyway? Summon monster, freedom of movement, disrupting weapon, trueseeing, I'd presume divine power, and how many more?

Trueseeing I'll give you since you contrived the scenario of facing off against a beguiler. That's also most of your highest level spells and none of it lasts all day. Hope that's the only combat you're in today; a GM decision.

Heck, you know what’s a good combat option? Not failing any will save that comes my way. You can’t even manage “I’ll block the monsters coming from the East and West corridors at the same time while also contributing to the main fight in front of us.”

If we're doing it with minions, sure I can. So can anyone.

The resolute ACF says I can my BAB in half when the save comes up until I next act for a will save boost equal to that same value. At 12 that's +4 from base and +6 from resolute to make +10 before wisdom and resistance bonuses. That to the cleric's +8 base and probably around a +6 wisdom unless you've minmaxed yourself into being even more crap at fighting. Wow. 20% more likely to pass if the fighter's wisdom is average.

First off, can they? Is there a bar a 12th character can walk into anywhere, let alone everywhere, and say, “barkeep! I’d like one ale, 2 fanatically loyal 15hd giant warriors, a 9th level sorcerer with a bunch of extra spell likes and HP, and an endless stream of mooks! No one who will demand a share of treasure mind!” We could both cancel out leadership. But the only thing you could do with leadership that is REMOTELY comparable is get a 10th level tier 1 caster to be a buff/summons bot, but then I just have a free wizard to spam haste on my preexisting army. Heck, charisma is even a useful stat for clerics. Generally a dump stat for fighters.

Contrived nonsense that dismisses universal options as unavailable to the fighter because "it's a wash" is not at all compelling.

I've already spelled out alternate ways of getting the same minions you're taking as granted to the caster with any character.

They just save a buck getting there. Uhm, YEAH. That’s the point. Where in your fighter WBL did you lay out the expenditure for your 15th level hirelings? You spent a ton of $$$ on expensive armor, shield, weapon.

Don't generally need 'em. If you'd rather play log-books and ledgers so you can have NPCs do your job for you, be my guest.

And of course I spent that money on the gear to do my job plus a selection of the things you're claiming as yours when they're not at all limited to casters.

I have GMW. Magic Vestment, so better outcome for less GP. (Actually, I can GMW the skeletons swords also, making them match your attack bonus, but anyway...)

Here's hoping none of your enemies has -any- access to dispelling effects, even though it's the same level spell as GMW... and is a common spell like... and dispelling screen is only one level higher... and it's really easy to incorporate into a whole variety of traps when you're spending all your spells to ape a fighter instead of a rogue...

I'm sure it'll be fine. Your GM only uses idiot beasts as enemies, right?

My stats are actually better than yours, because I can craft a belt of physical perfection +6 for under 40k AKA less than the cost of your AC I get free.

Oh, so you're taking craft wondrous item with -every- cleric you make?

That's a pathfinder item, btw. It costs 77k to make, not 40k, and in 3.5 it costs 72k gold and 5760xp if your GM lets you backport it. The closest published equivalent in 3.5 is the belt of magnificence which is much more expensive.

My gear is cheaper, my buffs are both free and better. My minions are free. And the cleric hasn’t even cracked a non core book yet.

Your gear is cheaper if you make your cleric a half-ass artificer, precluding picking up combat options with your feats. And not that much cheaper at that; magic vestment still needs an armor and/or shield to target and you can't make the amulet of natural armor at all.

You buffs get you to par, they don't get you ahead. You need minions and BFC to even start to make that argument. Even then, the buffs aren't always better than the gear even on the face of it, take the ring of protection vs shield of faith; always on vs minutes per casting; and the amulet of natural armor vs barkskin; always on vs 10 minutes/level and a cleric can't even cast it unless he's a plant domain cleric.

Your minions are crap and temporary unless they're -not- free. Those skellies' great swords are cash you left on the table when you killed the giants at the very least, nevermind the onyx to raise them.

Credit for sticking to core.

Because fighter gets 12 feats from all sources combined but Cleric has about 1/2 of every combat spell from every book in play.

Everybody with the cash gets -any- spell from any source. With the trick I mentioned in my previous post, anybody can get a pretty vast swathe of spells from -every- source. Getting them for free doesn't make them unique and we both know that the vast majority of spells, just like the vast majority of feats, are crap.

Anthrowhale

2020-09-08, 08:59 PM

First, I'm having to argue that WBL is not inadequate for warrior classes. The incredibly fluid nature of the cost/power ratio makes that difficult.

I believe it is adequate to keep up with game expecations if wisely spent on a well-designed fighter. I think you do need some system mastery to get there, because the lexicon of ways to spend wealth is fairly complex.

Second, I'm having to argue that the fighter's ability to combine abilities constitutes something unique even if most of the things he's combining aren't.

I'm less sure of this. Maybe in core, but elsewhere a cleric using Triadspell on Heroics (via Anyspell) for example can get quite a few bonus feats. A wizard or sorcerer could do something similar via Heroics, Mirror Move (http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/sb/sb20000901a), or Master's Touch. The ability to so easily acquire fighter feats devalues the fighter class feature a fair bit.

I still think Generic Warrior is a better designed Fighter. The extra flexibility in skills and the ability to easily sneak attack for bonus damage are great. It makes little conceptual sense for Fighters to not also be able to function in a high-damage striker role. The PHB division between "good at hitting" (Fighter) and "good at doing damage" (Rogue) is conceptually sketchy.

Oh, and for Nigel: polymorph any object[Great Wyrm Gold Dragon] is plausibly not legal due to PAO inheriting from Polymorph a 15HD limit.

Lans

2020-09-09, 01:37 AM

Thematically:
A) He should be internally a plausible mundane. No magical qualities innate to the fighter. He might wave a magic stick or garbs though.

B) He/she should be customisable to literally anything. No allegiances, nothing about specifically being a hero, no premade story telling, no race specific traits none of that. This is the only part where I included the she pronoun, conveniently.

A) Give the fighter +1 to all stats every 4 fighter levels, but can't go over 23 with out racial adjustments. If the Fighter is to be plausibly mundane let him be the very peak of plausibly mundane.

B) Add the Expert's skills onto the Fighter. Increase the number of feats and/or let the fighter use the Path of War versions of feats. As well as adding any remotely mundane feat to the fighter list

This gets the fighter to very high tier 4 or low tier 3

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-09, 07:02 AM

So, let's start with a bunch of core classes, martial-types only, with abilities that are focused on and balanced around the tactical level.

Enter a feat chain: Spellcasting (Basic, Expert, Advanced), granting access to one type (arcane, divine, Bardic, Shadow) and one method (Spells Known, Fixed List, Spells Prepared), granting access to ranger-style, bard-style or wizard-style casting. Spell are strictly on the tactical level only.

Beyond that we work out some sub-systems, with Ritual Magic / High Arcana, Statecraft, Warcraft and such focussing on the strategic level.

I don't see why you need to start with only martial classes, as it's entirely plausible for someone to have an amount of Necromancy or Nature Magic that is balanced with mundane sword-swinging. But broadly such a system seems entirely reasonable. However, even if you're stapling your utility abilities onto Fighters from outside the class, you're still stapling them onto Fighters.

I never said Wall of Stone is "useless"

Then we agree that the Fighter also ought to get some useful abilities? Because if the Wizard gets to do some useful stuff, and none of the martial types do, quibbling that it's not perfect is essentially pointless.

Two questions: how many 5th level clerics do you think there are in a city, and how many soldiers do you think are in a platoon (never mind a whole army)?

Platoon strength is between 20 and 50 soldiers (https://www.britannica.com/topic/military-unit). How many Clerics there are depends on a variety of factors, but even if the number isn't enough to feed your entire army, it's still more than you're getting from the Fighters.

No, it's not. And Planar Binding's drawbacks are definitely not just "have more adventures."

They definitely are. "Some devils show up and they're angry about those devils you bound last adventure" is an adventure hook. That, or it's the DM removing your character from play, but that's bad DMing and you shouldn't do it.

you can just hire a group of extra planar mercenaries that will win a war for you pretty easily.

That seems to me to fall under the same area as "you can just buy castings of Polymorph Any Object".

We here on the forums want a LOT more from the game than that I imagine, and we are a minority of a minority

I don't really think that's true. My experience has very much been that people would like to do higher-level stuff in their games, they're just hamstrung by a lack of rules, and by half (or more) of the classes falling over on the job.

That's the scale that even a Cloud of Vengeance is pretty insignificant, if you get my meaning.

Sure, but Control Weather will still put a big dent in an unprotected army.

Devils don't need to seek revenge, they are legalese masters. Your biggest challenge with a devil isn't worrying about repercussions on the back end, it's getting a deal that serves your interests more than theirs on the front end. Chances are if you're desperate (or foolish) enough to bind one, much less "a bunch", you're already on the back foot as far as negotiations go. And the "unreasonable" clause hamstrings what you can coerce without such a deal in place.

The contract-writing is abstracted into the Charisma check. You certainly could insist that the player write a legally-binding contract for you to poke holes in IRL, but that seems like it makes Planar Binding even more disruptive to the game.

polymorph any object[Great Wyrm Gold Dragon] is plausibly not legal due to PAO inheriting from Polymorph a 15HD limit.

Except it definitely doesn't. PAO defines a new set of target forms, which includes objects and explicitly allows you to violate the HD restrictions by turning creatures into creatures with more HD. The restrictions given in Polymorph no longer apply.

Gnaeus

2020-09-09, 07:03 AM

Sure I do. One creature is one creature. As I said at the end of the previous post, anybody can have minions. The same minions, in fact. The fighter wants a couple skellies, he buys the rod of the dead and undead controlling armor/shield or both and he gets just as many as the cleric; as many as he has bodies worth making one from.

Ok, let’s see, we are level 12, so that’s 88k. And you spent, hmm 75000, and 49000+ 1151 for some leather +1, so you are now 37151 below 0, or 125151 behind the cleric’s starting WBL, and your entire gear is a +1 armor. You could conceivably cripple yourself at level 14 in that manner.

Oh, just looked those up and it’s worse than that. Undead commanding armor just duplicates control undead, cast by a 13th level wizard, so trash DC, lasts for 13 minutes or until dawn whichever comes first. The rod will let you cast animate dead, but you can only control created undead equal to 4 times your CL, and the fighter doesn’t have a caster level. So RAW I don’t think you can command the undead you create. If you get to use the items CL10 indefinitely as your caster level, then you are only 8 HD behind the cleric, so the difference between 2 giants and 3, before including stuff like desecrate that the cleric also gets. The real use is kicking up a cleric’s turn/rebuke by 4 so he can have better slaves.

Sorry fighter, you are 1, cleric is legion.

AS long as they can actually grab, sure. With the trash AC, the AoO is going to ruin most attempts before grapple mods even come up

And again, many undead you can create have grab, but since these skeletons started the fight invisible they will do fine. And again, only mentioned fire giants because discussed upthread. With rebuke, any undead mooks we encounter get added to horde. What about some mummies to force everything we fight to make a will SoL at beginning of combat. Or some vampire spawn to make more disposable slaves.

Scorpion's grasp; sandstorm. It gives the character most of the benefits of the improved grab ability, including the ability to hold an enemy in a grapple while not being considered to be grappled yourself. It's not quite as good as being two characters but that's why you get minions. :smallamused

So your full attack happens with a dagger. Cool full attack. And again your minions are only affordable in 2 more levels after you sell everything else you own.

Now at 12 you could have summoned a huge elemental but that's your highest level ability to be able to make a decent bull rush for barely over a minute and not much else. Its other numbers are nothing special and it's nigh useless against flying foes. You could switch to an air elemental in that case but there's no reason a fighter shouldn't have picked up flight by now and is better at everything except grappling with standard equipment. The HP difference all but disappears if the fighter adds a vest of health

Was that listed in your gear? I don’t see it. I can’t find a vest of health at all, mr low op fighter.

Elemental tries to bull rush. Hope it's a relatively small target.
Fire giant gets punched in the face by whatever it is because laughable AC versus AoO.
Fire giant 2 makes full attack that does "meh" damage against the enemy's likely extant DR given its swinging at something CR 12.
Cleric full attacks and does meh damage because of lousy output and difficulty in hitting unless he's spent a substantial portion of his dailies on correcting those problems.
Couatl -tries- to planeshift target with a save DC lower than your own spells

1. It’s still bigger than the fighter
2. Invisibility. Or improved grab from a different skel type
3. His AB was 3 below yours, before the cleric GMWs if he wants to, and his target is grappled
4 same
5. DC 20 looks like a coin flip for most CR 12s. How likely is your 8th attack in a round to kill anything?

It's not a fighter bonus feat but there's always touchstone (catalogues of enlightement) and its greater power giving him access to the summoning domain and its spells. Between that and the afformentioned undead minion gear you're looking at pretty much the same thing except the fighter does better than the cleric with his full attack

You have 8 ranks in knowledge planes? And enough wisdom to cast high level spells from it? And again, the “aforementioned undead minion gear” uses about 80% of your level 14 WBL

Can a cleric beat a fighter with 0 WBL? Pretty convincingly.

If you expect anyone to argue that a single character of any class is better than an entire squad of minions, I don't know why you're directing it at me

Because you asserted it and continue to defend it, however illegally.

If you expect me to simply accept minions as a caster specific ability that only they can use, you shouldn't hold your breath

Well you haven’t mentioned a legal response yet, other than full attacking with a non magical dagger while you hold something in one hand.

Disruption blunted arrows or sling-stones; dirt cheap. Disruption primary weapon if undead are expected to be prominent for a while

1. Still not on your gear list. What WBL were you using for this?
2. Disruption uses the cleric’s will save DC. Weapons of disruption are DC 14. What were you saying before about how useless the Couatl’s SoL DC20 was before?
3. So your S&B fighter, when faced with undead, plans to drop his +3 S&B and pull out a sling to force DC 14 Will saves with your bad dex and no ranged feats? That’s incredible. Like I literally do not believe that anyone would do that.

Pierce magical concealment is a fighter bonus feat. Ring of see invisibility covers what the feat doesn't

Roger that. So your 6 fighter bonus feats are blind fight, mage slayer, Pierce magical concealment, improves unarmed strike, Improved grapple scorpions grasp. Wow that’s a lot of options

Where is the ring of see invisibility? Google doesn’t see it.

Also, where did that WBL come from

Hey look, a ring and an armor ability

Which you still couldn’t afford, even if you could swap them daily like a cleric can.

And what if you wanted Dispel Evil instead of disruption, or to dispel enemy flight, or energy resistance, or to clear a bunch of mooks with holy fire, just to give 4 more options from my core 3-5 list. Or to turn those wights into my forever slaves. To make the argument that a fighter has more combat options than a Czilla is ludicrous. And again, core cleric, dumpster diving fighter. This isn’t even touching on the non combat utility, mind, which the fighter would also need to pay for if he wants. This is just stuff I would include in “if I’m a buffing wizard, who would I rather have as my combat tank(s)”.

Just how many standard actions do you think you're going to get to make in a given combat anyway? Summon monster, freedom of movement, disrupting weapon, trueseeing, I'd presume divine power, and how many more?

Why would you assume I’m going to be using them all in the same fight? Pretty clearly meant for different encounters, unless that beguiler is a wight monk. I didn’t assume you were going to be disarming, tripping and grappling the same target in the same round.

Trueseeing I'll give you since you contrived the scenario of facing off against a beguiler. That's also most of your highest level spells and none of it lasts all day. Hope that's the only combat you're in today; a GM decision

Let’s see that’s 3 5th level spells to ignore bad stuff from 3 encounters. Let’s be boring and assume all my 6ths are summons, which I cast before combats. A couple of Vestments and 3 GMWs leave me several thirds and fourths.

Also, I’m way, way way, way way way below my WBL. I can trivially get wands, scrolls, pearls. I’ll have spells left when your HP run out that’s for sure.

The resolute ACF says I can my BAB in half when the save comes up until I next act for a will save boost equal to that same value. At 12 that's +4 from base and +6 from resolute to make +10 before wisdom and resistance bonuses. That to the cleric's +8 base and probably around a +6 wisdom unless you've minmaxed yourself into being even more crap at fighting. Wow. 20% more likely to pass if the fighter's wisdom is average.

Fighter feat 7. Being only 20% worse on Will saves. Noted.

Here's hoping none of your enemies has -any- access to dispelling effects, even though it's the same level spell as GMW... and is a common spell like... and dispelling screen is only one level higher... and it's really easy to incorporate into a whole variety of traps when you're spending all your spells to ape a fighter instead of a rogue...

I'm sure it'll be fine. Your GM only uses idiot beasts as enemies, right

Any buffs you have come from a potion bottle with your significantly -WBL. One of us is quite a bit more effective at fighting enemy casters, and it isn’t the fighter.

Oh, so you're taking craft wondrous item with -every- cleric you make?

That's a pathfinder item, btw. It costs 77k to make, not 40k, and in 3.5 it costs 72k gold and 5760xp if your GM lets you backport it. The closest published equivalent in 3.5 is the belt of magnificence which is much more expensive

Yeah. One feat to add about 50-75% of WBL? It’s amazing. Vastly more effective at raising combat effectiveness than any fighter feat ever dreamed of.

Of course, in a party the wizard may get CWI while I get wands or armor or rods and we can cooperate. But fighter can’t do that at all.

Good catch on the belt. We mostly pathfinder. I’ll downgrade my claim to “I will always be able to get stat boost items before you can afford them. Unless of course the MIC is in play in which case I can combine items like gloves of Str+4 Dex+2 which you probably can’t even buy and which still cost 5k less than you spend on your gloves of Str+4..”

Your gear is cheaper if you make your cleric a half-ass artificer, precluding picking up combat options with your feats. And not that much cheaper at that; magic vestment still needs an armor and/or shield to target and you can't make the amulet of natural armor at all.

You buffs get you to par, they don't get you ahead. You need minions and BFC to even start to make that argument. Even then, the buffs aren't always better than the gear even on the face of it, take the ring of protection vs shield of faith; always on vs minutes per casting; and the amulet of natural armor vs barkskin; always on vs 10 minutes/level and a cleric can't even cast it unless he's a plant domain cleric.

Your minions are crap and temporary unless they're -not- free. Those skellies' great swords are cash you left on the table when you killed the giants at the very least, nevermind the onyx to raise them.

I’ve used 0 level 1-2 spells. I could have better deflection AC for more than 3 hours per level if I wanted.

I spend 3000 GP on armor that matches the 18000 gp you spent. I may have to shell out for the amulet if no one around can cast it. I have to pay market price for one thing. Sad. (I may still be able to get a discount by having the rogue UMD scrolls. That’s 150 GP/crafting day vs 500 GP savings. But I can’t do it alone.)

Great swords are cheap and GMW is free if I want to bother. That’s probably less than your potion of CLW budget.

Credit for sticking to core

Thank you. Vs an all sources fighter

Everybody with the cash gets -any- spell from any source. With the trick I mentioned in my previous post, anybody can get a pretty vast swathe of spells from -every- source. Getting them for free doesn't make them unique and we both know that the vast majority of spells, just like the vast majority of feats, are crap.

No, nothing the cleric has is unique. It’s mostly available to a fighter with something like 3-4 times WBL. Agree. Is there a feat for that? The fighter would need to spend almost all his WBL to get those numbers that the cleric gets cheap, more than his WBL and a (illegal, out of class, requires all his skill points and high wisdom) feat for less minions, all his bonus feats and his WBL to match combat options in a less effective manner. The cleric needs to spend his more than base WBL to get a +3 attack bonus and 13 hp.

Oh, and that’s a perfect world fighter. If we are under WBL, he’s worse. WBL came in the form of random gear or printed dungeon stuff, so you have to sell stuff you don’t need at 1/2 to buy what you want? Worse. No magic mart world, or long wilderness trip? Much much worse. As long as the GM gives you everything you want you are only vastly behind the cleric.

Also I picked 12 because it’s a good level for you. Switching to an odd level will favor the cleric more.