[PEACH] Thirdtwin's Fighter Fix

[Thirdtwin]

As if there aren't already a hundred or more of these things, here I come stumbling across the finish line with my own fighter fix thing. It's probably 98% done, in the kind of way that I could spend another year working on it and it would still be 98% done. I'd love somebody to actually read it and tell me all the things that are wrong with it. Or right with it, I'd be happy if I'd actually done good working on this thing for a thousand years. Either way.

Thirdtwin's Dungeons and Dragons 3.5e Fighter Fix! (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hUhDiqe_yBd4DgJlidas8fYtTvaGUUXAkCkMetVKzOI/edit?usp=sharing)

Still haven't figured out what's making the Google Docs not work for a couple of people so in the absence of any clue what to do there, I'm going to post direct links to the stuff here, hopefully that will make it more readable.


Introduction (https://docs.google.com/document/d/16smq41uSWCyVy8TET0wl86Hypb2Smwl6h2M8K8WSE8c/edit?usp=sharing)

Class Table (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wAa7IJATTc_Bbmx8Mt8jFWE0sKGUdtLIWPBFdzaCVKs/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wGEO9G1YXybrKAkcECKy7XHAiqT5KTPGFMMhfNGZNsE/edit?usp=sharing)

Battlefield Doctrine Rules (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ywIfLA8-_FzkfbR1wU_Z0BmotOhsUZ94m3A8Gi8aY6k/edit?usp=sharing)

Doctrine Types

Offensive Doctrines

Weapon Mastery (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1fsHdeq1Q4G7PYi4bbBGJahfY3VcJsUZncsNy4dE6wuE/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/19CqkgRytWUbAcrEXRdK1g69bz93V91YpJPtPj8MqMCY/edit?usp=sharing)

Weapon Masteries: Simple Melee (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SfHsM_o3ENktuO9rGpXpAGC_yD8J5nVuzg0x8CnTWTs/edit?usp=sharing)
Weapon Masteries: Martial Melee (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1H6ba0hawmVyoZxSnHDQshpOOK6s8vv3SbVT3JN7xfAM/edit?usp=sharing)
Weapon Masteries: Exotic Melee (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lXiNXQ-aHxyg3tUJ7vJSbge1EcwKDvyFhxeaPVQ4GzQ/edit?usp=sharing)
Weapon Masteries: Ranged (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SWU23tdBBtytT8RCM70D78bQ5dDCaAKhIya1Va1X4J8/edit?usp=sharing)

Unarmed Combat (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1zYAM8ShgZOkzG_adLXjvAySTiGUe36nWtgvI49WnnoA/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/11AjCYiTDaTvPSKClV3fjfVkTy_1EozVS1FFAVvqbvz8/edit?usp=sharing)

Two-Handed Combat (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1LgWFZ_hsbGc0ChNJwBdceDAWt7mFYO9N0-pjYfB0m3A/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/17tHPsWx42iG8GP5ecV3RzGl2-knwUnPtMzPHPDnE99U/edit?usp=sharing)

Two Weapon Combat (https://docs.google.com/document/d/19bWwPwQOEUntkuqsyh517yc1TYmievJbPSpCKAIk36Q/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hwXj7rILA6kuhuUFvHwQPqxNqy5CsuDJQZyGxIWVptg/edit?usp=sharing)

Studied Combat (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1-DKOuL8CJwfSJOVtStZeJ8Qy7W8DdaCYXzJBsUIEzmo/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GmGTolgZmczScV-T8HbSR-uxoqk48Un4ZzbdQJ4j6hw/edit?usp=sharing)

Iaijutsu Mastery (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1LCXxjOATo2fMtFnhOSx1eaYRMrZc8FLNStPv2HWJVPI/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vvmTeJpBKmncJr1dQ5f-YnqgNjFJtcnHV2eFZuaZbrg/edit?usp=sharing)

Swashbuckling Style (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1sWGapM7N6-FQGQIZLnUGnN-msLBPp-6V69TUTwErkvg/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FRd_z7tAftwBrPm-uZppLZAQUvz5RO3OH0vZcPYhCDk/edit?usp=sharing)

Extreme Violence (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1sshfsqz7e2XYNw1P0lMIX33ahuk475wxsk72Xwytsyk/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BvWzxAjs0BFWJfhIPL8fxkKajWlOFR8eTMak6HioCnU/edit?usp=sharing)

Poison Proficiency (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1nQ6ZudCveB6p2weu9sPnPSIYYtLcQuUAXWxe57yqNJY/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1S4ILShzOSAoqjD14HkTwjM7-ddkiaRecn_9I7IBM0XI/edit?usp=sharing)

Sword Dance (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1-5HsOFN5eb7H22YMaS4RZJz-LOkq2uB15-p97UHDgsA/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/10EUSzzQDMeMxxOOBmiGxCPBTZ-XcaIDJWozMguWa674/edit?usp=sharing)

Hammerfall (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1g7A8QqTBnXRxZ7ncWeSQVo_UPDu2MjDvlCii8rYBZwY/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lNor6XEV-FO_crJ-BZVD3kNxAH3Dy1Yp3Fh4f4zzOK4/edit?usp=sharing)

Spearpoint (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/15_vtgKpkDBnomKhAdgX7fmMiez1wtZd6GIcrN7iWM1E/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SgXnN18VjdLb7PkBoLm6POA8R0qN5ZPg28VlnTfL_cs/edit?usp=sharing)

Volley Archery (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1S00ctUn6diaxFsYBm0buPn22ILil75Ob-vxXY48tIys/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/19bh2Tib0K8RqI6o_73127sYBWrNRSKr04gYFvu_l5bI/edit?usp=sharing)

Sniper Shooting (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1c7Z2P-X23C5o9uhQ0sFttmnC3wiwSU9R2D5OCeGpN7s/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1okRSJbxYFnYRAKKhV-xZjQ6UUW8rsEEqMyLfL3t1T7k/edit?usp=sharing)

Skirmishing Barrage (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1rQ7DxiU_a3zezXuVId0MSmLNY2Mk5h2wbc73rZH8sdE/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EhKBSZo1LXSHtIFMllZ1_3QocvMUGU04gEtUPiOypP8/edit?usp=sharing)

Momentous Throw (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1Ox06KtXj4lvR_rxoBsxW4zRcoixRfZYcgagX0Zlqz4E/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yuV2NGUtkeLXZj40gKoN2mb1mOF-gNcvHxCghw7QtIs/edit?usp=sharing)

Sling Combat (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1e8-_mWLJlmR3YwphbWbo1tm8b9NwqoSK0cKRA4_fx_w/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/16O08TNIhyrZ90-FTdazjJ0lQuIlJCOq4H_y2QxLSLpY/edit?usp=sharing)

Mighty Juggernaut (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1xJVbikHB9WLikBoJIFD5N1jZtk9aHE4J-6mDDx4F38k/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XK-f0Hx0rLYFhOERi5pqhmlpt9zQ7qjVsVKQ1-geDLw/edit?usp=sharing)

Alchemic Bomber (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1lh9LF2v9PkQpJK7pzxz8s9KrKrA0RuythtwGqMTP9zs/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QdBMKXror9qgv7Egni72GTppR5KillP-B39AYJGJLKM/edit?usp=sharing)

Terror of Death (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/11eMDWKcX8NkCTTgKVO67dHNIUbydeO74SJHMW-CQgRM/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vNeoJM9v_JzI6VzVWR7210p6ow2lJoStymJR3WO_Pf0/edit?usp=sharing)

Combat Focus (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1Vg_jyR2HcIQmsvAVRAGr5ulKbuu97D0LYYnG7Xdg_MI/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VH9Rc8LRapWLTDUw_BZeNc9KqTBA9pRh4L3VR4q8k2I/edit?usp=sharing)

Defensive Doctrines - Self

Swift-Footed Defense (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1UQCDXcNGW14Xa8tIv8358YIeQ4f_09sfsoM0hGbbaBI/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ODJ_Q2GQmVnp6OGmOiw6bQtiJrNx4GO-I25TpOI-aXU/edit?usp=sharing)

Steel-Wrought Defense (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1Ol2Azo2rr1rMEy8nfbnjw8KQQC74md6mJcuS_EOLZJA/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b0CLuIpcPMhLOTkBrztEsrOTIsvGrFmlPk-EW0nIgTU/edit?usp=sharing)

Shield Defense (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/19Ru4e8Tda5PXQUZsVgm4YKdKlWQbm_EUb0eqgC5vUqA/edit?usp=sharing) - Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bcbLKrvKrmlrBewnO1ACsWaBeM_OOMvjPBL1WJ968Hk/edit?usp=sharing)

Heroic Vitality (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1jEbiz1k60U972UbdOdijFAGyRYXmsPCwfO649wGzCeA/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eJtojF3fKRJr7S_IPE01r3tFL6kW2KAo4WHDT4Uo174/edit?usp=sharing)

Built Like a Brick House (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1a2YQv1wTwpAwPz9XJ7F3n3yHuSj4hbhLbekkT34j0uw/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lR13q-LbMmuJ7oaunhfLqb2C9O1BU4nXq0i6SyDYdLA/edit?usp=sharing)

Determination (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1BCFujTkD2y6BRGQzUW8hQhaJUsjfAFJQyosUq_m7Spk/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wPZlNVX653tznnb65yb6yT86Tx6Fi-elXmHWsl7bKqA/edit?usp=sharing)

The Joy of Motion (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1oONVodBYKg-cew6uyoML8MTNPBJXro0H6QiDG8Ka2eE/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ArhmhMWeSpaXy87JLB-R7iJZQ_RcybHAze4do5d_BVI/edit?usp=sharing)

Defensive Doctrines - Team

Combat Control (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1_OJJT--WDXmeiY8FnOp6SA9GNwwFgdJyo4BhNnHJq_s/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/19evMMiTvYsa02zznMmft9-DCOyP00tjngpo49-cVlb8/edit?usp=sharing)

Bodyguard (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1SZYSxXHlt0ETaIlk3MDX5K1kU9sCYVZL_XFIr49fGoE/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OcenY3tJ4Q0IIY385uHdkuJLBEtMW249RPFxmuq-vgk/edit?usp=sharing)

Skill Improving Doctrines

Covert Combat (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1jQX7kso8c3E-Rm1qNbI-44L2Wj1PIPsANG23jpIe0Lc/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PMVCJBPiLMp6b4qLv3gKCv1LULiPU82JeeyDxIGfLJI/edit?usp=sharing)

Battle Awareness (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1N_tmzYkp6vTp9wizZhmmVuSM_oycUZuvl2X2ikFY2hY/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/16aM7c43sQQpxbPu6z52fANsy8n-qSuuJ42RD2dxsjoY/edit?usp=sharing)

Rallying Leadership (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1QzHuSwgedBayaPungzSwq0GG1wkoU_lJPFGjsdPddos/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qZWXG5qHu5wrIghOsOjBqrmH2nMkW0Ye8Pvtdy4nZXE/edit?usp=sharing)

Battlefield Medic (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1EcymESJ1r9ZfhOW0Bau5Yeogxz8nmTEhJSgiZOHmaTA/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lg166-UAuStTsZPwpyUTMvnW5NVzQ_LKu5sec-bPKTI/edit?usp=sharing)

Mounted Combat (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1hzb-h_-U7T4iFjFqk-bDwtjnh1v98WFw_Us08SWsIbw/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zuEM-_U57Q7wP50oT1ugcftzpKyOu8jpf3eOBWkPOPg/edit?usp=sharing)

Battle-Tempered Crafter (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1nSQfs2bnuvkFYskUqZs8JvMYmdkykjxLeNSP6Z3-d8s/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Mk7aJ0jpea2Qu0hnQlSHpprkmdd7JVzPNi9t1okqgL0/edit?usp=sharing)

Alchemic Bomber (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1lh9LF2v9PkQpJK7pzxz8s9KrKrA0RuythtwGqMTP9zs/edit?usp=sharing)
Terror of Death (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/11eMDWKcX8NkCTTgKVO67dHNIUbydeO74SJHMW-CQgRM/edit?usp=sharing)

Utility Doctrines

Spellbreaker (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1BIkPTC4-T0Up6XDdwcKrfMWn5ON4y2q9KBwtqOafuNI/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ko2qWWqXfBuPg27TvLTZGCYqReIYI67c6ynRJxn7FJQ/edit?usp=sharing)

Mighty Juggernaut (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1xJVbikHB9WLikBoJIFD5N1jZtk9aHE4J-6mDDx4F38k/edit?usp=sharing)
Covert Combat (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1jQX7kso8c3E-Rm1qNbI-44L2Wj1PIPsANG23jpIe0Lc/edit?usp=sharing)
The Joy of Motion (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1oONVodBYKg-cew6uyoML8MTNPBJXro0H6QiDG8Ka2eE/edit?usp=sharing)
Battle Awareness (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1N_tmzYkp6vTp9wizZhmmVuSM_oycUZuvl2X2ikFY2hY/edit?usp=sharing)
Rallying Leadership (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1QzHuSwgedBayaPungzSwq0GG1wkoU_lJPFGjsdPddos/edit?usp=sharing)
Battlefield Medic (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1EcymESJ1r9ZfhOW0Bau5Yeogxz8nmTEhJSgiZOHmaTA/edit?usp=sharing)
Battle-Tempered Crafter (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1nSQfs2bnuvkFYskUqZs8JvMYmdkykjxLeNSP6Z3-d8s/edit?usp=sharing)

Special Doctrines

Legacy Heritor (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1-RamFnijqN89F5iYEr3SbzKpPhLQABCzgDCi9rQWJCw/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W61AYYnzH-ZohEYVOIyNxgD-2mvFZOKIhiFmp4ncX_g/edit?usp=sharing)

Mounted Combat (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1hzb-h_-U7T4iFjFqk-bDwtjnh1v98WFw_Us08SWsIbw/edit?usp=sharing)

Action Economy Improving Doctrine

Decisive Action (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1wchDhqoHm3plUtAGR4E5UkM9Q-lrr5bF1pO1_rWSDyE/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uefit4qK9HAPjl6ARDRwOXXRJ8vvjPqPS41Qo4Ml4zo/edit?usp=sharing)

Supplemental Rules

New Feats (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1f7ITAE3aID3XrUfnFhNErlWgdfpPfUDXD_mgXT1y4-E/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sMWl-BPRPib6EutosklK7uWNEHUEW_X0IX9yGcs4SH4/edit?usp=sharing)

Doctrine Synergies (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/17Qix9-wC1SwrSsiBakgqF25VfACB6O1dZ-xvs9LnRz0/edit?usp=sharing) -- Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WeWjXL1X5GJlCNzZCLO6lMdcd-VYJsX3_qkaBW4b_Bw/edit?usp=sharing)

Appendices

Appendix: Alternative Class Features (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1fa9u0qu-qRKoyjIVaY3WwNBGyoDb2E6TFhgXh-lXH5k/edit?usp=sharing)

Appendix: New Magic Weapon Properties (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1IF2LqK3HQxYnyT77pyg8LQvnsQF53SDcTd3cAsjhUCs/edit?usp=sharing)

Appendix: Prestige Classes (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1W6CJzCnjbXZvD-5W5At9AA8lxI4oF-SVnQuhdAC2eyM/edit?usp=sharing) - Commentary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1--qCx_FSEeCfVjlc-RLamC766PPtaSIKLPoV_dGt3ig/edit?usp=sharing)

Appendix: Updating Older Material (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AwBdtsXfUIsxH31UANOS-amZF1bEf6SU408bug1pLNE/edit?usp=sharing)


Important Updates

I don't remember the exact date I did this but I tightened up the formatting, bolding ability names and making lists out of headers instead of just internal text. Hopefully this increases readability. I'll probably do other stuff in this vein as I notice it. Still trying to figure out how to make Google Docs itself work for the people it's not working for otherwise.

November 4, 2023: Implemented a couple of Maat Mons's ideas, changing how Combat Training works (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25898631&postcount=11) and standardizing the adaptation features into a single "Combat Adaptation." (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25899084&postcount=14)

November 8, 2023: Just put direct links into the forum post. I was almost tempted to post everything in several forum posts, but I don't know if the table formatting would carry over properly, so I'm keeping it on Google Docs for now. If I really can't crack whatever's keeping people from getting in there I might copy it all over anyway.

November 10, 2023: Organized the Doctrines into rough categories on both the Google Docs intro page and the links here. On the Google Doc I listed a couple in multiple categories to give a broader sense of what some doctrines are capable of. Thanks to WyvernLord for the suggestion! (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25904460&postcount=20)

February 29, 2024: Added material pertaining to grappling in the Unarmed Combat, Doctrine Synergies and New Feats sections. Man, I hate grappling. Also I don't remember if edits bump the topic or not. If it does I apologize for the slight necromancy. Turns out edits don't bump the topic, so we're fine there.

March 7, 2024: Added a new prestige class, the Peerless Blademaster, and commentary on it. Cleaned up a couple of typos in the Prestige Class section.

March 9, 2024: Tightened up some wording in the Two-Handed Combat and Poison Proficiency doctrines, and added a bunch of templates to the Esoteric Exemplar feature of the Mounted Combat doctrine.

[Biggus]

I can only see the table of contents. The listed items look like links but when I hover the cursor over them nothing happens.

[Thirdtwin]

I can only see the table of contents. The listed items look like links but when I hover the cursor over them nothing happens.

Would you mind telling me what web browser you're using? It works for me normally on my phone using Firefox, but in Chrome I have to click on the link, and then a little window pops up, and then I click on the link in that window.

[ngilop]

you have to click on the links and it opens in a window. which you then have to maximize.


My issue is: it was hard for me to tell where one ability started and another ended.

Having the ability name be bold would make it a bit easier to read.

[sandmote]

It looks horribly overturned on its face, but you did say that's a goal. That's about all I'm actually qualified to comment on a 3.X project of this scale.

But hey, I can actually make Beowolf with this! I'd need a deep dive to get his unarmed strikes up to 80 damage on a critical hit (I don't play much 3.X and don't know how to do this offhand), but otherwise Extreme Violence and Built Like a Brick House cover his main stuff. He even basically does use the Combat Adaptation feature when preparing to fight Grendel. So this is very cool.

I also really like Flexible Fighting's design. Yes, you can use it to grab feats with really limited use in the moment when they would be useful. But you can also use the feature to access whichever feat you plan on taking the next time you level up, which is literally you being inconsistent at doing that thing until you get more training in and it becomes a regular combat skill.

[Thirdtwin]

you have to click on the links and it opens in a window. which you then have to maximize.


My issue is: it was hard for me to tell where one ability started and another ended.

Having the ability name be bold would make it a bit easier to read.

Thanks for the heads-up; I'm working on the formatting some more now so it shouldn't be as, well, word doc-esque. Let me know about any other potential readability issues.


It looks horribly overturned on its face, but you did say that's a goal. That's about all I'm actually qualified to comment on a 3.X project of this scale.

But hey, I can actually make Beowolf with this! I'd need a deep dive to get his unarmed strikes up to 80 damage on a critical hit (I don't play much 3.X and don't know how to do this offhand), but otherwise Extreme Violence and Built Like a Brick House cover his main stuff. He even basically does use the Combat Adaptation feature when preparing to fight Grendel. So this is very cool.

I also really like Flexible Fighting's design. Yes, you can use it to grab feats with really limited use in the moment when they would be useful. But you can also use the feature to access whichever feat you plan on taking the next time you level up, which is literally you being inconsistent at doing that thing until you get more training in and it becomes a regular combat skill.

Yeah Beowulf was definitely an inspiration for that doctrine. 40 damage is pretty high--it's just 10 off massive damage, which admittedly people don't tend to use. At the same time I think 40 pre-critical is very doable (at the very minimum other doctrine use can shore up your damage very quickly). I also put in a couple of ways to get to the severe and debilitating levels without requiring crit-farming.

...Although I suppose given Beowulf WAS an inspiration I should probably let you inflict the parts-ripping parts on a creature you're grappling, even though I hate grappling. I shall have to meditate on this.

[Biggus]

Would you mind telling me what web browser you're using? It works for me normally on my phone using Firefox, but in Chrome I have to click on the link, and then a little window pops up, and then I click on the link in that window.


you have to click on the links and it opens in a window. which you then have to maximize.


I'm using Chrome. And I can't click on the links or do anything to them at all: they're not links, they're just text.

[Thirdtwin]

I'm using Chrome. And I can't click on the links or do anything to them at all: they're not links, they're just text.

How odd. Do you have uMatrix or uBlock or one of those types of things running? Maybe it's blocking the part of Google Docs where the actual docs are. That's the best I can think of anyway.

Actually, let me try something. Can you click on this link here? (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wAa7IJATTc_Bbmx8Mt8jFWE0sKGUdtLIWPBFdzaCVKs/edit?usp=sharing)

[Miss Disaster]

Looks intriguing. And worth a deep dive.

Will you be migrating all these pages into a compiled, navigable single document of some sort?

[Thirdtwin]

Looks intriguing. And worth a deep dive.

Will you be migrating all these pages into a compiled, navigable single document of some sort?

Thanks for the interest!

Do you mean like a pdf or something? I honestly hadn't gotten that far at thinking about the presentation. I originally posted everything in the same document file but after it started really getting huge my computer became less and less able to handle it, which is why I ultimately split each doctrine off to its own page (I don't have the best computer right now). I'd have to figure out how to make it a pdf (or whatever) in any case, find out what software to use and so on. It's not impossible, but it's probably not happening particularly soonish either.

[Maat Mons]

I feel like the ability to bypass ability score prerequisites could go further. As written, a Fighter with average Dexterity can’t take Two-Weapon Fighting until level 6. He’d need at least 5 fighter levels to get his effective Dexterity high enough. And then he’d need to wait until level 6 to actually have a feat to spend. Ranger gives prerequisite-free Two-Weapon Fighting at 2nd level, and it’s considered underpowered.

I’d say, the 1st level of Fighter should let you treat yourself as having 13 in any or all ability scores for purposes of qualify for feats on the Fighter bonus feat list. I wouldn’t limit it to feats taken with the actual Fighter bonus feats. Let it work when spending your regular feats too. At the 2nd level of Fighter, this can rise to 15, and then another +2 for every Fighter level thereafter.

If you want it to be more limited, maybe every time you gain a Fighter level, you pick one ability score. The first time you pick any given ability, you get to treat yourself as having 13 in it for feat prerequisites. Every additional time you pick a score you’ve picked at least once before, the value you can treat yourself as having for that ability increases by +2. This would be a bit more comparable to some Pathfinder abilities, like Brawler’s Cunning.

[Thirdtwin]

I feel like the ability to bypass ability score prerequisites could go further. As written, a Fighter with average Dexterity can’t take Two-Weapon Fighting until level 6. He’d need at least 5 fighter levels to get his effective Dexterity high enough. And then he’d need to wait until level 6 to actually have a feat to spend. Ranger gives prerequisite-free Two-Weapon Fighting at 2nd level, and it’s considered underpowered.

I’d say, the 1st level of Fighter should let you treat yourself as having 13 in any or all ability scores for purposes of qualify for feats on the Fighter bonus feat list. I wouldn’t limit it to feats taken with the actual Fighter bonus feats. Let it work when spending your regular feats too. At the 2nd level of Fighter, this can rise to 15, and then another +2 for every Fighter level thereafter.

If you want it to be more limited, maybe every time you gain a Fighter level, you pick one ability score. The first time you pick any given ability, you get to treat yourself as having 13 in it for feat prerequisites. Every additional time you pick a score you’ve picked at least once before, the value you can treat yourself as having for that ability increases by +2. This would be a bit more comparable to some Pathfinder abilities, like Brawler’s Cunning.

You raise good points. In trying to come up with a way to give fighters with average scores more support for getting the feats they needed I didn't actually work out the numerical impact of the fix I came up for it. I'll put that in the oven a bit longer.

[Morphic tide]

My chief issue is that this is a rather extreme complexity jump, with the nested lists and layers of weapon-specific bonuses. It looks much more like it deserves a generally-applicable subsystem the Fighter happens to be the best host for (Heron-Marked (https://minmaxforum.com/index.php?board=245.0) is a good example for this) than a rework of the Fighter, as it looks more like a Psychic Warrior case that forgot to drop some Bonus Feats and chassis than the existing "best of the basics" Fighter.

Even worse, a huge amount of what it's doing seems like it could fit perfectly fine in the existing feat system addons and alterations, between Oriental Adventures Martial Arts for bonuses to taking a given combination of feats without an extra cost, [Tactical] feats having one feat do several things, High Sword Low Axe for specifics to mixing different weapons, Weapon Groups bundling different weapons, Martial Study giving Discipline skills, and Lightning Boomerang for shenanigans going deep on one weapon. The setup seems to be doing this to wrangle some ease-of-use out of the pileup of complexity, but what is the structural demand for this to function as a Fighter subsystem instead of a Fighter Bonus Feat revamp?

[Maat Mons]

One potential issue that occurs to me is that Fighters played from 1st level normally take combat feats with their general feat slots too, not just their bonus Fighter feat slots. If they don’t, they generally won’t get their main thing going until twice as high a level as Fighters that do. As written, high-level Fighters using this homebrew are incentivized to use only their Fighter bonus feats for combat feats, because they have plenty and Combat Adaptation applies only to feats taken as Fighter bonus feats, not feats taken using general feat slots, even if they happen to be on the Fighter bonus feat list. I suppose the retraining rules can be used to ameliorate this, but I don’t really like when the way the game encourages you to build a character organically from level 1 doesn’t match up to the way the game encourages you to build a character if you start at high level.

Maybe things could be worked a little differently. Since what this Fighter remake is giving you, from level 5 on, is a pool of floating feats you can reallocate every day, there could be a general feat, not on the Fighter bonus feat list, that adds +1 to your pool of floating bonus feats. Essentially, you can choose to trade a general-purpose feat slot to have another feat slot to use with Combat Adaptation. Just make sure the feat has Combat Adaptation as a prerequisite, and that you include a line saying it can be taken multiple times. That doesn’t completely eliminate the issue that, as you go to higher Fighter levels and get more floating feats, it becomes comparatively less appealing to give up a general-purpose feat to get one more floating feat. But at least the high-level Fighter who took Combat Expertise with a general feat slot at low level to rush his way into a tripping build can switch away that Combat Expertise feat when he chooses to swap his floating feats away from tripping for the day. Oh, and if Combat Adaptation doesn’t come at 1st level, when you get it, you should have the option to retrain any of your general feat slots in which you too combat feats to this other, new feat that boosts Combat Adaptation.

Since Combat Adaptation turns your Fighter bonus feats into a floating pool and Martial Flexibility Flexible Fighting is also a floating feat pool, maybe there’s a way to integrate those two abilities. Actually, wait, Combat Adaptation makes Weapon Aptitude obsolete when you get it. Maybe those should somehow be integrated together too.



I’m not entirely sure how this would be implemented, but instead of giving the Fighter class all good saves, maybe the class could include an option some Fighters could take advantage of to bolster the class’s bad saves? Maybe something similar could be worked out instead of giving the class 8 + Int skill points per level.



I haven’t actually read any of the Doctrine stuff yet. I’ll try to find time for that in the near future.

[Thirdtwin]

My chief issue is that this is a rather extreme complexity jump, with the nested lists and layers of weapon-specific bonuses. It looks much more like it deserves a generally-applicable subsystem the Fighter happens to be the best host for (Heron-Marked (https://minmaxforum.com/index.php?board=245.0) is a good example for this) than a rework of the Fighter, as it looks more like a Psychic Warrior case that forgot to drop some Bonus Feats and chassis than the existing "best of the basics" Fighter.

Even worse, a huge amount of what it's doing seems like it could fit perfectly fine in the existing feat system addons and alterations, between Oriental Adventures Martial Arts for bonuses to taking a given combination of feats without an extra cost, [Tactical] feats having one feat do several things, High Sword Low Axe for specifics to mixing different weapons, Weapon Groups bundling different weapons, Martial Study giving Discipline skills, and Lightning Boomerang for shenanigans going deep on one weapon. The setup seems to be doing this to wrangle some ease-of-use out of the pileup of complexity, but what is the structural demand for this to function as a Fighter subsystem instead of a Fighter Bonus Feat revamp?

The demand for this to be a subsystem stems from a couple of things. Firstly: I demanded a somewhat more complex fighter remake than just "make better feats 5head," because system wonkery is interesting to me. That's where most of the demand comes from. I will admit that I erred a bit on the side of "complexity for complexity's sake" in the design here, but that's mostly because I don't think "fighter" is actually served by being "conceptually simple" in 3.5e D&D. It's a break with TSR-variant fighters, but I think the function of 3.5e is different enough from those versions that simply following tradition in this case was detrimental to the very concept of a non-magical fighter contending with the high-end threats later-level D&D 3.5e expects from you.

This is also test ground for a thought experiment of mine. See, people say Tome of Battle is magic. People say the original 4e fighter is nothing but a spellcaster and that its powers are just spells. It's pretty obvious to me that neither of these statements could be further from the truth, but the controversy won't go away even if I disagree with it. Fair enough. So let's see how far we can push, then. Let's make a bunch of abilities that are at-will, extraordinary, require no expenditure of resources per battle at all, and so forth. How will people, and particularly people who believe the above two things, respond? Is it actually possible for a certain subset of WotC-era D&D players to conceptualize of something a) more complex than base statistical numbers going up (and apparently feats) which is b) simultaneously not magic for whatever definition in their minds "magic" means? Because it really fascinates me that when the comparisons come out it's always to, well, magic. Or psionics right now. How far can I, personally, go in providing level-appropriate (and sometimes level-inappropriate) effects that otherwise share none of the trappings of magic, before somebody goes "that's just magic" again?

(I mean I really am kind of fascinated that the first comparison here is to the psychic warrior of all things. Even if you only read the Weapon Mastery doctrine and based your criticism on that, psychic warriors do almost nothing that requires taking advantage of the properties of specific weapons at all. They summon a weapon or maybe wedge it onto their arm in place of their hand, that's about as weapon-y as psychic warriors actually get, in 3.5e anyway.)

Now as far as revamping feats. Let's just be honest with ourselves:
Nobody's going to make a feat that lets you choose one attack a round (every round, for the rest of your character's life) that then automatically hits, crits, ignores concealment, penetrates mirror images, has a chance to bypass contingencies and immediate action interrupts, and deals maximized damage on top of that.
Nobody's going to make a pair of feats that let a Str 10 human lift 11,200 lbs over their head.
Nobody's going to make a feat that lets you take 1/10th HP damage from everything.
Nobody's going to make a feat that lets you dominate a small number of concurrent creatures as an extraordinary ability.

Feats have a certain level of power, and people's expectations are conditioned to that level of power. Nobody's going to accept the idea that the same system resource that's supposed to be worth "+2 bonus to two arbitrary skills" could give someone effects like that. Not even if they had "Fighter 18" and 10 different preceding feats in the prereqs line. Hell, I barely accept that idea, and I'm the one giving out these effects. Which, of course, is why I didn't make them feats. That and the fact that long feat trees almost inevitably pigeon-hole the character who invests into them, and one thing I want to do is give the fighter at least some power to generalize outward from just being (say) The Guy Who Trips People Over and Over.

[Thirdtwin]

One potential issue that occurs to me is that Fighters played from 1st level normally take combat feats with their general feat slots too, not just their bonus Fighter feat slots. If they don’t, they generally won’t get their main thing going until twice as high a level as Fighters that do. As written, high-level Fighters using this homebrew are incentivized to use only their Fighter bonus feats for combat feats, because they have plenty and Combat Adaptation applies only to feats taken as Fighter bonus feats, not feats taken using general feat slots, even if they happen to be on the Fighter bonus feat list. I suppose the retraining rules can be used to ameliorate this, but I don’t really like when the way the game encourages you to build a character organically from level 1 doesn’t match up to the way the game encourages you to build a character if you start at high level.

Maybe things could be worked a little differently. Since what this Fighter remake is giving you, from level 5 on, is a pool of floating feats you can reallocate every day, there could be a general feat, not on the Fighter bonus feat list, that adds +1 to your pool of floating bonus feats. Essentially, you can choose to trade a general-purpose feat slot to have another feat slot to use with Combat Adaptation. Just make sure the feat has Combat Adaptation as a prerequisite, and that you include a line saying it can be taken multiple times. That doesn’t completely eliminate the issue that, as you go to higher Fighter levels and get more floating feats, it becomes comparatively less appealing to give up a general-purpose feat to get one more floating feat. But at least the high-level Fighter who took Combat Expertise with a general feat slot at low level to rush his way into a tripping build can switch away that Combat Expertise feat when he chooses to swap his floating feats away from tripping for the day. Oh, and if Combat Adaptation doesn’t come at 1st level, when you get it, you should have the option to retrain any of your general feat slots in which you too combat feats to this other, new feat that boosts Combat Adaptation.

Since Combat Adaptation turns your Fighter bonus feats into a floating pool and Martial Flexibility Flexible Fighting is also a floating feat pool, maybe there’s a way to integrate those two abilities. Actually, wait, Combat Adaptation makes Weapon Aptitude obsolete when you get it. Maybe those should somehow be integrated together too.



I’m not entirely sure how this would be implemented, but instead of giving the Fighter class all good saves, maybe the class could include an option some Fighters could take advantage of to bolster the class’s bad saves? Maybe something similar could be worked out instead of giving the class 8 + Int skill points per level.



I haven’t actually read any of the Doctrine stuff yet. I’ll try to find time for that in the near future.

Working backwards: the doctrines are where the fun stuff is :D (I really wish there was an emoticon to display exactly the kind of goofy face I'm making).

On skill points: Okay, so. What defines a Rogue, to you? Is it the ability to appraise the value of treasure, sneak, move in near silence, open locks, locate and disarm mechanical and magical traps, forge or decode documents and even trick magical items into thinking they're a wizard or something? Or the ability to exclusively have 8 abstract units of attainment in personal capability (plus Int mod)? Like, that's going to differ for a lot of people, and I legitimately don't know what side of the line any given person is. But to me, rogues are about the first thing. Which is to say, it's not just having the most skills that make a Rogue a Rogue, it's what kinds of skills those are. "Being the only class to have the specifically highest symbolic number of how many things it could potentially be good at" is not as important to me as actually being good at those things. So to me, giving another class 8 + int skill points does not in and of itself take anything away from the Rogue, or at least nothing that the Rogue really ought to exclusively have*. Because this fighter still has cross-class skill penalties to deal with, it will never be as good at trap-killing, UMDing, forging, etc etc as a Rogue. Even the expansions to skills some doctrines give don't touch those parts of the Rogue's list, because that's where a lot of the Rogue's class identity is secretly hidden. There are a couple things this Fighter can seek parity with the Rogue over, such as seeing things and hearing things, but really almost every class should be able to see and hear things.** So that's how I see it, and that's why I gave this fighter 8 + int skill points.

As far as all good saves go: Basically this is my way of idiot-proofing the class. Because, as I hope you'll see, I do also give ways for some fighters to enhance their saves above and beyond the base numbers. I just also want to make sure that, you know, if you get the guy who wants to have Weapon Mastery in 12 different weapons like some sort of zodiacal sword expert instead of taking the save upgrades, and never ever ever uses their doctrine adaptation, that they still aren't entirely screwed when the vampire or whatever mindzonks them and then they kill the whole party, especially since they're a lot more capable in general now of killing the whole party. There's a fine line between enabling flexibility of builds and just making the thing in- or omni-competent that I stumbled back and forth over in the process here but I think it ended up okay. Plus the old fighters had great saves too, so call it a throwback.

Weapon Aptitude really is almost an appendix from way back when I first started building this thing, when I decided that if the warblade got to have it the fighter should too. I put in more comprehensive feat switchers after that, but I was nervous about taking that back out in case I phrased something wrong and suddenly you couldn't swap weapon focuses anymore. I probably should take it out anyway now that the design is more settled.

I definitely understand disliking non-organic high-level builds, but I basically always play games that put retraining on the table and designed things with the expectation it would be available. I could tweak Combat Adaptation to be more permissive, though, yeah. You have a good eye for this stuff and I appreciate that you're taking the time to offer the critique. Thank you.

*I could understand balking if it were, say, the wizard who got 8 skill points, because they already have all that magic. But part of what quote-unquote "mundane" skill entails in 3.5e is, actually, skills (the system term), so the classes that have less magic to rely on should, in my view, have more access to skills in general.
** I'm actually a little surprised at how few base classes get Spot and Listen. Granted I suppose if everyone got them, there would be no point in making them a "skill" that you could be bad at, because everybody wants to have Spot and Listen when the sneaky guys come out to play. Somewhat of a conundrum I suppose.

[Morphic tide]

The demand for this to be a subsystem stems from a couple of things. Firstly: I demanded a somewhat more complex fighter remake than just "make better feats 5head," because system wonkery is interesting to me. That's where most of the demand comes from. I will admit that I erred a bit on the side of "complexity for complexity's sake" in the design here, but that's mostly because I don't think "fighter" is actually served by being "conceptually simple" in 3.5e D&D. It's a break with TSR-variant fighters, but I think the function of 3.5e is different enough from those versions that simply following tradition in this case was detrimental to the very concept of a non-magical fighter contending with the high-end threats later-level D&D 3.5e expects from you.
...So why are you calling this a Fighter fix when your premise is intentionally different from the original Fighter? And where do new players go in your model to come to grips with the basic game mechanics, the Barbarian?


This is also test ground for a thought experiment of mine. See, people say Tome of Battle is magic. People say the original 4e fighter is nothing but a spellcaster and that its powers are just spells. It's pretty obvious to me that neither of these statements could be further from the truth, but the controversy won't go away even if I disagree with it. Fair enough. So let's see how far we can push, then. Let's make a bunch of abilities that are at-will, extraordinary, require no expenditure of resources per battle at all, and so forth. How will people, and particularly people who believe the above two things, respond? Is it actually possible for a certain subset of WotC-era D&D players to conceptualize of something a) more complex than base statistical numbers going up (and apparently feats) which is b) simultaneously not magic for whatever definition in their minds "magic" means? Because it really fascinates me that when the comparisons come out it's always to, well, magic. Or psionics right now. How far can I, personally, go in providing level-appropriate (and sometimes level-inappropriate) effects that otherwise share none of the trappings of magic, before somebody goes "that's just magic" again?
Again, why call this very different thing a Fighter fix? Again, why does it need siloed off? Fighter Bonus Feats already cover some shamelessly supernatural things like lighting your fists on fire and launching Force effects with the PHB2 Stunning Fist follow-ons, as well as Tome of Battle access via Martial Study. There being very little of the fantastical now doesn't change that there's ample precedent among what are currently outliers. And with Midnight, Desert Wind, and Expeditious Dodge, blatant direct replacement of underperformers is entirely permissible.


(I mean I really am kind of fascinated that the first comparison here is to the psychic warrior of all things. Even if you only read the Weapon Mastery doctrine and based your criticism on that, psychic warriors do almost nothing that requires taking advantage of the properties of specific weapons at all. They summon a weapon or maybe wedge it onto their arm in place of their hand, that's about as weapon-y as psychic warriors actually get, in 3.5e anyway.)
The PsyWar comparison is specifically about "bolt subsystem to Fighter Bonus Feat pile".


Now as far as revamping feats. Let's just be honest with ourselves:
Nobody's going to make a feat that lets you choose one attack a round (every round, for the rest of your character's life) that then automatically hits, crits, ignores concealment, penetrates mirror images, has a chance to bypass contingencies and immediate action interrupts, and deals maximized damage on top of that.
Nobody's going to make a pair of feats that let a Str 10 human lift 11,200 lbs over their head.
Nobody's going to make a feat that lets you take 1/10th HP damage from everything.
Nobody's going to make a feat that lets you dominate a small number of concurrent creatures as an extraordinary ability.
Meanwhile, both Dexterity and Wisdom have full attack+damage applications, with the latter being a single feat, making Hammerfall's attack penalty for Con-to-damage be rather pathetic. Plenty of feats for things like at-will healing or temporary HP got printed. Shock Trooper completely erasing damage output compromise happened. Just how much does the laundry-list of explicit properties in that first case do that handing an Area entry to an Ubercharge wouldn't? How well does that last point compete with Leadership?


Feats have a certain level of power, and people's expectations are conditioned to that level of power. Nobody's going to accept the idea that the same system resource that's supposed to be worth "+2 bonus to two arbitrary skills" could give someone effects like that. Not even if they had "Fighter 18" and 10 different preceding feats in the prereqs line. Hell, I barely accept that idea, and I'm the one giving out these effects. Which, of course, is why I didn't make them feats. That and the fact that long feat trees almost inevitably pigeon-hole the character who invests into them, and one thing I want to do is give the fighter at least some power to generalize outward from just being (say) The Guy Who Trips People Over and Over.
Vow of Poverty, Ancestral Relic, and Item Familiar would like to have a word with you about single feats doing limited things. To an only slightly lesser degree the entire [Tactical] category. Fighter doesn't need basically anything in Hammerfall, they can already one-round anything in the normal CR band by about 5th level just fine. They don't need "take an attack penalty to do double damage", the standard for damage output when you have any clue what you're doing is already erasing everything in your reach of a chosen target in the opening round unless they have a hard shut down to make you entirely useless.

[Thirdtwin]

...So why are you calling this a Fighter fix when your premise is intentionally different from the original Fighter? And where do new players go in your model to come to grips with the basic game mechanics, the Barbarian?

Because, as Grandpa Simpson would put it, it was the style at the time. It's been a while since this was the case, but there was a time where D&D homebrew for 3.5e concerned itself with so-called fighter fixes of varying intended power levels, from simple to complex, from "whatever tier the person thought fighters were 'supposed' to be" all the way up to Tier 1 (or at least they tried for that). Some are fondly remembered, most aren't remembered at all. I'm calling back to that with this fix. I don't expect mine to really "make waves" as far as anything like that goes and honestly I'm impressed I'm getting any sort of response at all. It might even mean I did something right.

And, I'll be frank, I don't think the normal fighter is any good at letting new players come to grips with the basic game mechanics. A few feats as permanent picks--feats you can fail to qualify for, unlike those that some other classes can give you--tied to a rather average chassis, a very strong multiple ability dependency based on the assumption of melee combat, and being stapled with an undue expectation of realism while your friends are talking to animals like a Disney princess or flying and so on--doesn't really prepare you for what's really going on in a given 3.5e game unless and until you get your hands on some magic items (which authorial intent at least makes clear you're supposed to get some of, eventually).

I can't speak toward whether the designers intended the fighter to be the Easy Mode class. I can speak toward the apparent result, that of a class with relatively low mechanical engagement that nevertheless struggles to handle the challenges the game offers unless built in specific ways to achieve specific ends. That's similar to the kind of "easy mode" that old NES games used to have, where you often wouldn't be able to play the last several levels of the game you (or more probably your parents) paid the same money everybody else did to get to play because you found the other modes too challenging. Now granted, I don't think the barbarian fills that niche either--in fact I think in general 3.5e is pretty bad at accessibility to new players, no matter what class you end up stumbling into. So I don't feel any particular need to have to cater to them. I don't have to constrain my design goals to coalesce the perfect Dungeons and Dragons Fantasy Experience for a 13 year old kid who despite all odds still managed to end up playing this old clunker of a system instead of whatever their friends happen to be playing nowadays (probably 5e, or 6e next year when the edition numbers turn over). My goals are mostly to see how actually good I am at expressing 3e mechanical concepts, according to the goals I laid out for myself (I laid out those goals in the introduction to my document, in case it's still unclear why I've chosen to do things this way), and to see if anybody else can appreciate and/or enjoy them for what they are.


Again, why call this very different thing a Fighter fix? Again, why does it need siloed off? Fighter Bonus Feats already cover some shamelessly supernatural things like lighting your fists on fire and launching Force effects with the PHB2 Stunning Fist follow-ons, as well as Tome of Battle access via Martial Study. There being very little of the fantastical now doesn't change that there's ample precedent among what are currently outliers. And with Midnight, Desert Wind, and Expeditious Dodge, blatant direct replacement of underperformers is entirely permissible.

Oh, there's no "need" for any of this. We can get real philosophical about what "need" indicates, but I don't really want to so I'm not going to. Either way this is pretty much a vanity project. I want to see whether some ideas I had worked. Obviously I can't change the present normative consensus concerning the 3.5e fighter with what may as well be some trumped-up homebrew.

And you admit it yourself that the feats that actually do achieve things above and beyond the really sad numerical basis most of them have are "outliers." Like, I was gonna say they were outliers. You beat me to it. What that means is that there is a mean that most feats manage to regress to, and if I just dump a bunch of stuff calibrated at outlier level rather than aiming for that mean, people will balk at yet another implementation of broken third-party bullpucky. I wanted to see if scaling effects implemented through class table-like structures would give people a chance to maybe not jerk that knee when presented with transmundane fighter capability.


The PsyWar comparison is specifically about "bolt subsystem to Fighter Bonus Feat pile".

Okay.


Meanwhile, both Dexterity and Wisdom have full attack+damage applications, with the latter being a single feat, making Hammerfall's attack penalty for Con-to-damage be rather pathetic. Plenty of feats for things like at-will healing or temporary HP got printed. Shock Trooper completely erasing damage output compromise happened. Just how much does the laundry-list of explicit properties in that first case do that handing an Area entry to an Ubercharge wouldn't? How well does that last point compete with Leadership?

Huh. I thought people liked decisive strike when the monk had it. Stick it on a class that's strictly better than the monk, with a broader number of weapons to use it with no less, and suddenly it's bad? Could have fooled me. Now no, it's not superlatively brilliant compared to Shock Trooper but let's be honest, nothing is. What it does do is relieve some of the pressure on damage-dealing fighters to always be shock trooper combat brutes--not all of it, but some. Considering the synergies with other Constitution-centered doctrines, the intention was to create a fighter who fought materially differently from an ubercharger, still did reasonable (rather than arbitrary) amounts of damage to threaten enemy lives, and have other things to recommend it besides just huge hunks of damage. None of the damage dealing methods I devised are going to compete with ubercharging when it comes to dealing raw damage, because ubercharging does all the damage. The point isn't to dethrone ubercharging, it's to shake up the meta such that ubercharging (or guy tripping) isn't the only thing an "optimized" fighter must do. To make a Con-amping fighter (or any non-Str attribute-amping fighter) at least theoretically desirable in parties. (I go into some of this in the document's introduction, not that I really expect people to read the commentaries and such but I would be happy if they did.)

And Leadership isn't even a fighter feat to begin with. Are you here to defend the dignity of feats, or of the fighter class? At least let me know which stately institution I caused more offense to with this thing.


Vow of Poverty, Ancestral Relic, and Item Familiar would like to have a word with you about single feats doing limited things.


...what are currently outliers.

And as long as WotC is not printing new material, feats on that tier will continue to be outliers, because all the third party feats on that level will be rejected out of hand.


To an only slightly lesser degree the entire [Tactical] category. Fighter doesn't need basically anything in Hammerfall, they can already one-round anything in the normal CR band by about 5th level just fine. They don't need "take an attack penalty to do double damage", the standard for damage output when you have any clue what you're doing is already erasing everything in your reach of a chosen target in the opening round unless they have a hard shut down to make you entirely useless.

Again that word "need." For a decades-old game. A thing for fun-havings. I just find it funny.

I'd say about 95% of this isn't about need for me, it's about amusement. The other 5% is to win a fight with a person on the internet that probably doesn't even know they were fighting me at the time, and that need is the sole thing that keeps the shriveled ember of life beating in my chest for another day. (Kidding, kidding!) I certainly wasn't considering whether this was something the fighter "needed," because nobody needs anything related to this pile of numbers and words we call a TTRPG. I just made up some **** I thought was fun, and was curious as to whether other people vibed with my sense of fun or didn't. But "Thirdtwin's Wishy-Washy Attempt at Finding Friendship through Several Long Chapters of Self-Devised 3.5e Mechanical Jargon" isn't as snappy as "Thirdtwin's Fighter Fix."

[Thirdtwin]

How do I get more PEACHes? I'm grateful for the ones I've gotten but I'll always appreciate more. Trying not to be obnoxious about bumping over and over, as well.

[WyvernLord]

To be fair it's quite a lot to go through. I enjoy that you can make basically any type of combatant with this and the combinations once you have a few to spare can let you really enforce your identity. I think some commentary on which doctrines are good at low levels would be helpful just a guide posts because some are cool and have unique effects, but not until level 8 or 9. For Example Decisive Action at level 1 feels disappointing compared to the staples Weapon master, TWF, THF, Unarmed, Swashbuckling. But also if you haven't picked it up by level 9 you just clearly don't know how strong action economy manipulation is.
If you do something like take 1 offensive 1 defensive and weapon mastery by level 3 to be well rounded and categorizing them would be good for complexity. Combine that with concise descriptors and I think intuitively you'd be able to pick up appropriate doctrine for a character concept.

I think that sword dance, hammerfall, and spearpoint stat replacements effects should read you may replace instead of being a flat change. I feel like most fighters will end up taking one of them depending on their weapon choices and I think any of them fit with a strength based fighter.

Weapon mastery is my favorite doctrine just because it's kinda fun going through the weapon lists to see how certain weapons are portrayed and also trying to find specific combinations of tricks for build ideas.

[Thirdtwin]

To be fair it's quite a lot to go through. I enjoy that you can make basically any type of combatant with this and the combinations once you have a few to spare can let you really enforce your identity. I think some commentary on which doctrines are good at low levels would be helpful just a guide posts because some are cool and have unique effects, but not until level 8 or 9. For Example Decisive Action at level 1 feels disappointing compared to the staples Weapon master, TWF, THF, Unarmed, Swashbuckling. But also if you haven't picked it up by level 9 you just clearly don't know how strong action economy manipulation is.
If you do something like take 1 offensive 1 defensive and weapon mastery by level 3 to be well rounded and categorizing them would be good for complexity. Combine that with concise descriptors and I think intuitively you'd be able to pick up appropriate doctrine for a character concept.

I think that sword dance, hammerfall, and spearpoint stat replacements effects should read you may replace instead of being a flat change. I feel like most fighters will end up taking one of them depending on their weapon choices and I think any of them fit with a strength based fighter.

Weapon mastery is my favorite doctrine just because it's kinda fun going through the weapon lists to see how certain weapons are portrayed and also trying to find specific combinations of tricks for build ideas.

You're right. Signposting could always help. One of the problems is I couldn't decide how to divide things up--which doctrines were for offense, vs defense, vs utility, especially since some of them had bleedthrough across those concepts. Saying "start with a defensive doctrine" would be helpful but I'd have to hammer out which ones were mostly defensive first. (...which I'll probably end up doing. Like I said, I could work on this for another year and still be 98% done).

Re: Decisive Action, I was indirectly signposting it by making it one of the few doctrines with an aggressor level prereq higher than 1, and also a number of doctrines known on top of that. I tried pretty hard to make it hard to have more doctrines than, like, 3/5 your aggressor level in general, so that it would take an accumulation of character levels before you had three or so. Ultimately what this would put across is "this is not something level 1 players should have access to, wait until you're higher level." Action economy tricks are force multipliers, but you need to have enough force to multiply for it to be worth more than other choices, and that usually doesn't happen until you're a bit higher level anyway. But it is basically a gimme once you get to that point. The convenient thing is that a DM who feels it too cheesy can just say "no Decisive Action" and not have to worry about the balance implications of taking off specific class features at specific times and all that.

I really was of two minds about sword dance etc. On the one hand, you're right. On the other hand, I wanted to encourage a different game feel for each form of attack, so that (say) swinging really fast and making a bunch of sword cuts differed from biding your time and making a single stab at a vulnerability. And I wanted to tie it into different abilities because I wanted different sorts of characters to have a chance to contribute as fighters besides the power attackers. My intended compromise was going to be to make a feat that let you add Str to the abilities those doctrines were built around so there was at least some opportunity cost, but then I... didn't for some reason?

Glad to hear you like weapon mastery. It sounds like it's doing exactly the kind of thing I want it to do, inspire different builds around different weapon properties. This is good. :D

[Naaman]

How do I get more PEACHes? I'm grateful for the ones I've gotten but I'll always appreciate more. Trying not to be obnoxious about bumping over and over, as well.

Haha! I'm still reading... Its a massive project you've got here.

Off the top ofy head, I don't know how to "feel" about it, but I "know" that the fighter archetype should be among the most difficult classes to overpower by any means (magical or physical)... Possibly only the paladin should be more... Resolute?

I felt that Pathfinder's bravery ability didn't quite get it done, but their heart was in the right place. Ultimately, the fighter is expected to have lived a life confronting danger, which requires a certain amount of not only sharpness and awareness, but mastery of emotions (of all kinds, but fear, dispair and anger being among the most frequently dealt with).

So in that sense, I feel like having all good saves is appropriate. I suppose if the monk and favored soul can have them, the fighter maybe could as well.

I also dig the exotic/unarmed strike option.

I honestly feel that unarmed fighting in 3.5 is a bit too rigid (for example, if I have a sword and you do, too, I should be able to occupy you sword with my sword and attempt to trip you without provoking an AoO... Of course, let IUS do that, too... But I digress...). The main point is that ANY so-called professional fighter (like a knight or samurai or gladiator) will know a lot more about fist fighting than anyone who hasn't dedicated their lives to fighting in all kinds of scenarios.

I'm not sure how I feel about 8 skill points and the large list of skills. Maybe cut it back to 4 or 6, and reduce the skill list to a "base set" and then at first level, give the class x bonus skills added to the class skill list (or perhaps something like how the Samurai from OA had bonus class skills based on their clan)?

I suppose level for level, a ranger or a rogue should be able to get the drop on a fighter (you know, 51% or more of the time) all else being "equal" (assuming we are still aiming at what I presume to be your verisimilitude).

As to whether it is "Tier 1" I cannot say, as I have never played past 13th or 14th level. I can say that I have always favored martial classes, and in my groups, I was always the primary damage dealer (this is in the pre-optimization era when 3.5 was "new" and pre-Eberon, back when you actually had to flip through a physical book to find out what was in it in order to build a character, rather than having online repositories of references and lists by category.... Whew... There is A LOT to 3.5...).

I will do my best the PEACH more after I've read more of what you've written. It's kinda close to my heart because the fighter is my go-to class in 3.5, so I appreciate just how much you've put into this.

[Thirdtwin]

Haha! I'm still reading... Its a massive project you've got here.

Off the top ofy head, I don't know how to "feel" about it, but I "know" that the fighter archetype should be among the most difficult classes to overpower by any means (magical or physical)... Possibly only the paladin should be more... Resolute?

I felt that Pathfinder's bravery ability didn't quite get it done, but their heart was in the right place. Ultimately, the fighter is expected to have lived a life confronting danger, which requires a certain amount of not only sharpness and awareness, but mastery of emotions (of all kinds, but fear, dispair and anger being among the most frequently dealt with).

So in that sense, I feel like having all good saves is appropriate. I suppose if the monk and favored soul can have them, the fighter maybe could as well.

I also dig the exotic/unarmed strike option.

I honestly feel that unarmed fighting in 3.5 is a bit too rigid (for example, if I have a sword and you do, too, I should be able to occupy you sword with my sword and attempt to trip you without provoking an AoO... Of course, let IUS do that, too... But I digress...). The main point is that ANY so-called professional fighter (like a knight or samurai or gladiator) will know a lot more about fist fighting than anyone who hasn't dedicated their lives to fighting in all kinds of scenarios.

I'm not sure how I feel about 8 skill points and the large list of skills. Maybe cut it back to 4 or 6, and reduce the skill list to a "base set" and then at first level, give the class x bonus skills added to the class skill list (or perhaps something like how the Samurai from OA had bonus class skills based on their clan)?

I suppose level for level, a ranger or a rogue should be able to get the drop on a fighter (you know, 51% or more of the time) all else being "equal" (assuming we are still aiming at what I presume to be your verisimilitude).

As to whether it is "Tier 1" I cannot say, as I have never played past 13th or 14th level. I can say that I have always favored martial classes, and in my groups, I was always the primary damage dealer (this is in the pre-optimization era when 3.5 was "new" and pre-Eberon, back when you actually had to flip through a physical book to find out what was in it in order to build a character, rather than having online repositories of references and lists by category.... Whew... There is A LOT to 3.5...).

I will do my best the PEACH more after I've read more of what you've written. It's kinda close to my heart because the fighter is my go-to class in 3.5, so I appreciate just how much you've put into this.

Thanks for putting what time you have into reviewing, I really appreciate it.

You definitely got where I was coming from with the saves. I do also think that the paladin should have better saves in practice (which Divine Grace obviously helps with) but these days I almost always mentally substitute the Pathfinder paladin for the 3.5e one, and that one comes with good will saves to go with the good fort saves and still gets Divine Grace.

I'm not compromising on the skill points. I know it's a lot, especially if you're a human and you don't dump Int (which you can kinda do as a fighter now). And a lot of doctrines boost particular skills in and of themselves too. But looking at it from the other direction, that means you can play a half-orc now, or maybe something even dumber than that, and not be stuck as the One Skill Wonder. It's a hard balance to walk, but ultimately I still think that a fighter should be well-rounded in a broad category of non-magical stuff, if not the stuff that rogues in particular are supposed to be good at.

Depending on the doctrinal choices you make (there are a couple like Battle Awareness that pertain directly) a ranger or a rogue as they are right now might have a much harder time getting the drop on a fighter than a raw 50% of the time. In my head there exists versions of the ranger and rogue that are similarly improved, especially in their specific wheelhouses of stealth and maneuvering and so on, where they can compete at and surpass that level. The problem is the ones in my head don't actually exist in the real world (although I'm sure somebody bothered to upgrade rangers or rogues independently of this) and if it takes me as long to build them as it took to make this fighter I might not live long enough to finish them lol. I put some alternate class features in one of the appendices that give rangers and rogues access to some doctrines, at least.

And yeah I don't think I hit Tier 1 either. It was actually kind of liberating to decide that it didn't matter whether I did or not, I could just put what I wanted in and not have to worry about which infinite loop the fighter had to pull off by what level threshold and just put stuff like sundering buildings and causing earthquakes in.

[Naaman]

Thanks for putting what time you have into reviewing, I really appreciate it.

You definitely got where I was coming from with the saves. I do also think that the paladin should have better saves in practice (which Divine Grace obviously helps with) but these days I almost always mentally substitute the Pathfinder paladin for the 3.5e one, and that one comes with good will saves to go with the good fort saves and still gets Divine Grace.

I'm not compromising on the skill points. I know it's a lot, especially if you're a human and you don't dump Int (which you can kinda do as a fighter now). And a lot of doctrines boost particular skills in and of themselves too. But looking at it from the other direction, that means you can play a half-orc now, or maybe something even dumber than that, and not be stuck as the One Skill Wonder. It's a hard balance to walk, but ultimately I still think that a fighter should be well-rounded in a broad category of non-magical stuff, if not the stuff that rogues in particular are supposed to be good at.

Depending on the doctrinal choices you make (there are a couple like Battle Awareness that pertain directly) a ranger or a rogue as they are right now might have a much harder time getting the drop on a fighter than a raw 50% of the time. In my head there exists versions of the ranger and rogue that are similarly improved, especially in their specific wheelhouses of stealth and maneuvering and so on, where they can compete at and surpass that level. The problem is the ones in my head don't actually exist in the real world (although I'm sure somebody bothered to upgrade rangers or rogues independently of this) and if it takes me as long to build them as it took to make this fighter I might not live long enough to finish them lol. I put some alternate class features in one of the appendices that give rangers and rogues access to some doctrines, at least.

And yeah I don't think I hit Tier 1 either. It was actually kind of liberating to decide that it didn't matter whether I did or not, I could just put what I wanted in and not have to worry about which infinite loop the fighter had to pull off by what level threshold and just put stuff like sundering buildings and causing earthquakes in.

Yep, sure!

Part of what informs my opinions on the fighter has to do with concepts like military training being at least as much about mental discipline as it is physical. Since any "fighter" is likely to have gone through some kind of process that approximates a similar level of challenge, I would expect that such a character (that is, one with heroic class levels, not merely a "warrior" or commoner who joined the military and/or was conscripted) have a sharpness about his wits.

I do think there is room for a fighter that is difficult to surprise: being a point man, for example, requires lots of listen and spot checks, as well as possibly relying on the best possible initiative modifier you can get. I suppose a ranger who received the same treatment as your fighter should make an objectively better point man (and ambusher), of course. Then again, I wonder if someone like Rambo would be all fighter (using your fix) or a multiclass build that includes your fix for any fighter levels...

Your point about being good at non-magical things makes a lot of sense as a reason for lots of skill points.

[lade5]

Could you create some more synergies to use, I want to use this fighter build in my campaign. Also if you don't mind could use do an epic doctrine as well. Thnx . Great Work

[Thirdtwin]

Could you create some more synergies to use, I want to use this fighter build in my campaign. Also if you don't mind could use do an epic doctrine as well. Thnx . Great Work

Thanks! I was trying to come up with more synergies but it can be pretty hard. As for epic, I'm really not accustomed to epic levels, I'd need to do a lot deeper dive into things than "lol epic spellcasting," and all I'd be working off of is the SRD because I don't have the book. So for right now at least that's not in the cards. I do appreciate your interest though.

[lade5]

Thanks! I was trying to come up with more synergies but it can be pretty hard. As for epic, I'm really not accustomed to epic levels, I'd need to do a lot deeper dive into things than "lol epic spellcasting," and all I'd be working off of is the SRD because I don't have the book. So for right now at least that's not in the cards. I do appreciate your interest though.

Your disciplines offer a chance for a high powered campaign without using magic . Maybe you could divide the disciplines into fields that only martial characters like the fighter , rogue, ranger, paladin and monk can use.

i.e monk having accessed to unarmed combat, battle awareness, determination, joy of motion, built like a brick
Paladin having access to Shield training, mounted combat, Inspiring leadership, Hammerfall etc

i am truly interested in seeing what the epic level of your disciplines can offer .