Frosty
2008-04-01, 06:47 PM
A Parody of a Satire?
I like D&D, where most of the classes are reasonably balanced with each other or at least have their own unique role. One serious exception to this is the Fighter class, which is grossly underpowered. The Fighter supposedly fills the "meatshield" role. Unfortunately, it's by far the weakest melee class. For example:
Warblades: They have more hp, and have more options than the Fighter. Sure the fighter can use what little options he has all day, but his options are little.
Barbarian: This class really outshines the Fighter in the meatshield role. More HP, built-in DR, and Rage for even more HP? Blows fighter out of the water. To add insult to injury, he even has more skill points!
Paladin: Free horse that doesn't die from one hit. Hey, an extra body means more meatshielding! And also, has non-crappy saves.
People sometimes think Warblades are weak because of few Maneuvers known, however they actually have more tricks than the Fighter. A Warblade get over 40 feat-equivalent abilities over the course of 20 levels, and his ability to exchange known maneuvers for others is also a nice ability. Fighters however barely have more than 20 feat-equivalents by level 20, and they are set in STONE once chosen. Besides, a Warblade can easily gain access to additional moves by using Martial Scripts from the Tome of Battle. Having fewer feat-equivalent abilities and and needing to foresee the entire campaign when building the fighter makes fighters useless fairly quickly.
Fighters have no way of adding more tricks to their (small) book, with the exception of expensive custom items that grant feats. And all this assumes a high magic campaign where magic shops are available to begin with. If a Fighter wants to know a good number of tricks, they need to spend a lot of their wealth on it, instead of gear to keep themselves alive. This brings us to:
Fighter have an Achilles' heel that can easily be taken advantage of. Steal their weapon, and all the Fighter's abilities (and most of their wealth) are gone as fast as Superman's abilities when he's exposed to Kryptonite (unless the Fighter was built to pretend to be a Monk). No other class can be neutralized as easy, where playing a Fighter requires bribing and begging the DM not to make you useless. A naked Fighter can pick up a log, and be completely incompetent given that his Weapon focus doesn't work, and he takes a -4 non-proficiency penalty. Warblades can at least re-train their weapon-specific feats.
Melee is very reliable in D&D. I'm not denying that. However every class can smash things. The Fighter's fighting abilities aren't all that impressive, and can easily be equaled or exceed by other classes. Casters can cast Divine Power or Tenser's Transformation. Rogues make use of Use Magic Device, and every class can have use-activated and command word activated magic items. Sources like the Magic Item Compendium allow any character to spend their wealth on quality magic items and become a competent source of melee damage.
Fighters aren't even that fun to play. It's annoying to be stuck forever with the choices you make, since feats are your entire class abilities. A Warblade can switch out his strikes with 5 minutes of practice. A barbarian at least already have abilites that allow him to better tank and smash. Although a Fighter may look interesting on paper, when actually played in a real game this lack of versatility often makes them feel like a liability instead of an asset.
Every single one of the Fighter's so-called class "features" can screw over newbies. For example, the "oh look, you picked Monkey Grip instead of Shock Trooper. you don't have all feats and optimoal builds memorized. you will suck now" is one common example, where one wrong choice will reduce efficiency forever. A TPK involving a Fighter can actually be a good thing. If the Fighter loses a level, he may get to re-pick a feat at level-up! This brings us to:
Fighters are simply fragile. Sure they have good HP and Fort saves, but that is it. They will die to Fireballs faster than Rogues. They will kill the caster before commiting seppuku while Dominated. 2 low saves, and special defenses make them an easy target. Intelligent monsters will ignore characters like the Fighter in order to kill off the bigger threas first, meaning Fighters frequently try to tank monsters and end up being an afterthought. In other words, even if the Fighter was equal to other classes, the fact that the Fighter is usually a few levels behind the rest of the party due to not learning anything from his fights really negates that..
To restore class balance to our beloved game, I propose the following house rules to make the Fighter class not so underpowered:
Fighters get bonus gold. For each xp a Fighter earns, he gets one gold for free.
Fighters gain XP at a rate 50% faster than other classes, so they can gain gold even faster.
Fighter feats can be switched out once each day with a minimum of practice time.
Increase Fighter HD to d12, to keep up with the Barbarian and Warblade
Allow Fighters to have some sort of taunt ability, so enemies won't ignore them so much.
I like D&D, where most of the classes are reasonably balanced with each other or at least have their own unique role. One serious exception to this is the Fighter class, which is grossly underpowered. The Fighter supposedly fills the "meatshield" role. Unfortunately, it's by far the weakest melee class. For example:
Warblades: They have more hp, and have more options than the Fighter. Sure the fighter can use what little options he has all day, but his options are little.
Barbarian: This class really outshines the Fighter in the meatshield role. More HP, built-in DR, and Rage for even more HP? Blows fighter out of the water. To add insult to injury, he even has more skill points!
Paladin: Free horse that doesn't die from one hit. Hey, an extra body means more meatshielding! And also, has non-crappy saves.
People sometimes think Warblades are weak because of few Maneuvers known, however they actually have more tricks than the Fighter. A Warblade get over 40 feat-equivalent abilities over the course of 20 levels, and his ability to exchange known maneuvers for others is also a nice ability. Fighters however barely have more than 20 feat-equivalents by level 20, and they are set in STONE once chosen. Besides, a Warblade can easily gain access to additional moves by using Martial Scripts from the Tome of Battle. Having fewer feat-equivalent abilities and and needing to foresee the entire campaign when building the fighter makes fighters useless fairly quickly.
Fighters have no way of adding more tricks to their (small) book, with the exception of expensive custom items that grant feats. And all this assumes a high magic campaign where magic shops are available to begin with. If a Fighter wants to know a good number of tricks, they need to spend a lot of their wealth on it, instead of gear to keep themselves alive. This brings us to:
Fighter have an Achilles' heel that can easily be taken advantage of. Steal their weapon, and all the Fighter's abilities (and most of their wealth) are gone as fast as Superman's abilities when he's exposed to Kryptonite (unless the Fighter was built to pretend to be a Monk). No other class can be neutralized as easy, where playing a Fighter requires bribing and begging the DM not to make you useless. A naked Fighter can pick up a log, and be completely incompetent given that his Weapon focus doesn't work, and he takes a -4 non-proficiency penalty. Warblades can at least re-train their weapon-specific feats.
Melee is very reliable in D&D. I'm not denying that. However every class can smash things. The Fighter's fighting abilities aren't all that impressive, and can easily be equaled or exceed by other classes. Casters can cast Divine Power or Tenser's Transformation. Rogues make use of Use Magic Device, and every class can have use-activated and command word activated magic items. Sources like the Magic Item Compendium allow any character to spend their wealth on quality magic items and become a competent source of melee damage.
Fighters aren't even that fun to play. It's annoying to be stuck forever with the choices you make, since feats are your entire class abilities. A Warblade can switch out his strikes with 5 minutes of practice. A barbarian at least already have abilites that allow him to better tank and smash. Although a Fighter may look interesting on paper, when actually played in a real game this lack of versatility often makes them feel like a liability instead of an asset.
Every single one of the Fighter's so-called class "features" can screw over newbies. For example, the "oh look, you picked Monkey Grip instead of Shock Trooper. you don't have all feats and optimoal builds memorized. you will suck now" is one common example, where one wrong choice will reduce efficiency forever. A TPK involving a Fighter can actually be a good thing. If the Fighter loses a level, he may get to re-pick a feat at level-up! This brings us to:
Fighters are simply fragile. Sure they have good HP and Fort saves, but that is it. They will die to Fireballs faster than Rogues. They will kill the caster before commiting seppuku while Dominated. 2 low saves, and special defenses make them an easy target. Intelligent monsters will ignore characters like the Fighter in order to kill off the bigger threas first, meaning Fighters frequently try to tank monsters and end up being an afterthought. In other words, even if the Fighter was equal to other classes, the fact that the Fighter is usually a few levels behind the rest of the party due to not learning anything from his fights really negates that..
To restore class balance to our beloved game, I propose the following house rules to make the Fighter class not so underpowered:
Fighters get bonus gold. For each xp a Fighter earns, he gets one gold for free.
Fighters gain XP at a rate 50% faster than other classes, so they can gain gold even faster.
Fighter feats can be switched out once each day with a minimum of practice time.
Increase Fighter HD to d12, to keep up with the Barbarian and Warblade
Allow Fighters to have some sort of taunt ability, so enemies won't ignore them so much.