The unwanted Fighter

[Simba]

In my recent groups I experience a real lack of Fighters. I mean the D&D core class Fighter. People only play Warblades or other combat related classes anymore. Why? Because in nearly every aspect the Fighter is lacking. Fewer HPs. and skill points, no abilites, only feats. Ok, lots of feats, but in my opinion that is not enough.

Any ideas how to fix this without overballancing?

[Kroy]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=D%26D+3rd+ed+Fighter+Fixes
Or just search our local Homebrew boards. There are tons of fixes

[kamikasei]

Does it need to be fixed? People are enjoying themselves playing other classes, aren't they?

[Simba]

Yes, that's true. BUT may be the fact that Fighters have become less enjoyable because of better, mote versatile, more effective alternatives is what I would like to change.

[Faulty]

I created a Fighter with build versatility in mind here. The Ultimate Fighter might appeal to you, as well, if you prefer special abilities. The Pathfinder Fighter is pretty good, my Fighter was very influenced by it.

Also, the Warblade having a d12 Hit Die and getting access to Fighter feats is such a God damn stupid idea. No one but Knights and Barbarians should get d12 HD, period, in my opinion.

[Bluebeard]

The Fighter class was a silly idea.
The Warblade and Psychic Warrior are our Fighter fixes of choice.

[AslanCross]

I usually multiclass Fighter and Warblade to mitigate the "You count as a Fighter of 2 levels lower" penalty and to gain bonus feats, not to mention heavy armor and ranged weapon proficiencies.
I agree that the vanilla Fighter was a bad idea in the first place; had they made it like the Warblade from the get go, we wouldn't be having these "Fighter sucks" threads as much.

[Sinfire Titan]

I created a Fighter with build versatility in mind here. The Ultimate Fighter might appeal to you, as well, if you prefer special abilities. The Pathfinder Fighter is pretty good, my Fighter was very influenced by it.

Also, the Warblade having a d12 Hit Die and getting access to Fighter feats is such a God damn stupid idea. No one but Knights and Barbarians should get d12 HD, period, in my opinion.

Now, you see, your fix doesn't address the main problems with the Fighter class. All you did was give them better numbers and make them better at their job, but you did nothing to address problems such as Multiability Dependency, Item Dependency, Combat Style focus, or Flexibility.

Pathfinder and a good number of other Home Brew fixes, coincidently, also fail to address these issues. As a matter of fact, Pathfinder's fix is a near carbon-copy of various Home Brew fixes commonly posted on the internet.


Here are the problems with the Fighter:

1: Feat selection. Their choices are limited to a select few viable feats that make the class dip-worthy. 20 levels for 11 bonus feats is nice, but their choices are extremely limited in value. Power Attack, Improved Trip, EWP (Spiked Chain), and a handful of others (about 6 feats in all, most of which can be easily gained with your normal 7/8 feats). The more feats they are given, the less a Core Fighter will be worth. Adding in splat just makes it worse, as you will quickly find that a lot of feats are not worth the effort it takes to gain them (High Sword Low Ax, anyone?).

2: Swift and Immediate actions. The caster's best friends are the Fighter's red-headed step-children. They get virtually nothing from those two types of actions, something the Bo9S tried hard to correct with the Boost and Counter options. Giving them something to do with these is a great way to improve the class, as it allows them to make effective use of their actions/turn.

3: Movement. Spellcasters can freely take Move actions without being seriously penalized. Fighters? Can't move more than 5ft/round without feeling the hurt. Reducing the Full Attack to a Standard action is a bit much, but something does need to be done about this. Rangers can get away with this (both when ranged and with TWFing due to Travel Devotion being so useful for Swift Hunter builds and Tumble being a class skill), and every Martial Adept can make up for taking move actions via strikes.

4: Multi-Ability Dependency. Almost as bad as the Monk or Paladin. Fighters need a good Int for Combat Expertise if they plan on taking it before 9th, a good Dex if they plan on taking Combat Reflexes at all (and many fighter builds practically require it), a good Con so they don't die within one round of tanking, and a good Str so they don't deal crappy damage (Power Attack). If they are focusing on the Combat Focus feat tree from PH2, then they also need to have a Wis of 13. On a 32 PB, getting between 13-20 in 4 or 5 different stats is somewhat tedious, and actually doing so will likely bite you in the ass later on (setting each major stat to 14, for example, will indeed punish you at every opportunity because your major stats and Str score are all too low).

5: Item Dependency. The Fighter absolutely cannot function if he loses his primary weapon. He can afford one backup weapon on the standard WBL, anything more than that is suicidal. While he may be able to make due for a short duration, the fact is that he is more limited than a Wizard with no spell component pouch (the Wizard has some spells that don't need spell components, and can even summon temporary spell components with a 1st level spell) while doing so. Tzeentch forbid if the DM ever uses Sundering, MDJ, or the cliche "You are all captured" trick. And Khorne save the Fighter who is in a low WBL/no Magic setting (as the odds of him getting a good weapon to do his job will be slim to none). Many DMs overlook this portion of the game, as every class requires Stat Boosters to function at an even level with appropriate CR Opponents.





I've yet to find a Fighter fix outside of the Bo9S that manages to address these issues (and even the Bo9S only manages to mitigate them to the point where you can actually do something without your WBL if you feel like it).

[Fishy]

In my gaming group, I've noticed that no one wants to poke themselves in the eye with a stick. Does anyone know how to fix this?

Maybe some homebrew sticks?

[Kaiyanwang]

See, Speaking for myself, I learned on these boards how "Fighter suxx". Maybe becasue I didn't see so many ToB copies where I live, but people of mine and other gaming group enjoyed fighter, and the concept behind fighter. It's true that past campaing we had a fighter, but now we play gestalt so we have a Fighte/Knight, a good character but it's now only a fighter. I agree with above, anyway, MADness overall.


Said this, at least in my experience, the problem with the fighter is that I like a class with a lot of feats, and i found it useful and maybe powerful (even if the charge feats are mandatory and if something is always mandatory there is something wrong in balance), but fighter needed class features too.

IMHO, a good fix could have been fill the empty level slots with the weapon focus ---> weapon supremacy tier and with these features that now are ACF (dungeoncrasher, C Cheese ACF and overpowering attack come in my mind).

As someone pointed out recently (IIRC, Eldariel in the TWF thread) feats needed a rework (and I love feats and I don't like powers as they are in 4th edition). Mainly, IMHO, they needed to be MERGED.

A kind of evolution of tactical feats, I mean.

Examples:

Two Weapon Fighting: automatic gain of additional attacks with BAB and dex raise.

Improved trip, knock down and sweeping trip merged in the same feat.

Combat experise, superior combat experise and allied defense merged in the same feat.

Shield bash, shield charge and shield trip in the same feat. And so on.

Leave the fighter a supremacy above some kind of strike and maneuver, and above armor optimization, and you have a good fighter and all meleers happier.

Sadly, designers headed in a different direction in 4th. And don't make me talk about magic

[bobspldbckwrds]

the problem with the fighter is usually the person playing them, or not playing them. the PHB fighter is simply not as powerful as a wizard at higher levels. but there are always equalizers.

for instance, you're weapon is sundered and you dont have a backup. trip them, then initiate grapple from your vantage point of standing.

oh noes! a wizard is fighting you! run past the minions (leave those to your wizard) and make him roll some concentration checks.

poison is an underhanded way to do terrible, nasty, hideous, and hilarious things to your enemys.

ring of jumping, cross class ranks in tumble, improved feint, ring of invisibility.

thinking can be your best friend! you know that one chapter in the PHB, the one with the rules for all that cool stuff that you can do in combat? it was written for the fighter. fighter was made to be the master of a thousand combat maneuvers, use them. it may not be as glorious as class abilities, but the bonus feats make for something that a lot of people dont think about in terms of fighters flexibility.

[Kaiyanwang]

the problem with the fighter is usually the person playing them, or not playing them. the PHB fighter is simply not as powerful as a wizard at higher levels. but there are always equalizers.

for instance, you're weapon is sundered and you dont have a backup. trip them, then initiate grapple from your vantage point of standing.

oh noes! a wizard is fighting you! run past the minions (leave those to your wizard) and make him roll some concentration checks.

poison is an underhanded way to do terrible, nasty, hideous, and hilarious things to your enemys.

ring of jumping, cross class ranks in tumble, improved feint, ring of invisibility.

thinking can be your best friend! you know that one chapter in the PHB, the one with the rules for all that cool stuff that you can do in combat? it was written for the fighter. fighter was made to be the master of a thousand combat maneuvers, use them. it may not be as glorious as class abilities, but the bonus feats make for something that a lot of people dont think about in terms of fighters flexibility.

As a whole, I can agree with you (at my table, the good / bad fighter was the build, but more was the experience and imagination and cunning of the player playing it).

Said this, a little bit of "powering up" for the fighter could have be done, IMHO. I see above that every people take the fighter fix in a different way (splatbook, EXPH, ToB)

[Eldariel]

the problem with the fighter is usually the person playing them, or not playing them. the PHB fighter is simply not as powerful as a wizard at higher levels. but there are always equalizers.

I'd say the problem in Fighter-class is the Fighter-class and the Fighter-class alone. If it were built in a better manner, you wouldn't need to come up with a new stunt in every combat to remain interesting and pray your DM not to hit your items to remain useful. If the Fighter-class had better design, none of this discussion would be necessary. Unfortunately, same goes for the rest of the PHB classes (save for the Rogue and possibly the Bard).

for instance, you're weapon is sundered and you dont have a backup. trip them, then initiate grapple from your vantage point of standing.

See, that's the problem, you can't do that. Well, not unless you burn two feats on Improved Unarmed Strike and Improved Grapple at any rate - without Imp. Grapple, that AoO is going to ruin all your attempts. Also, Grapple still doesn't work too well against mid- to high-level adversaries due to opponents tending to be big melee brutes or casters with Freedom of Movement, Contingencies and what-have-you.

If that opponent just sundered your weapon and you don't have a backup, you're going to get the smackdown from a hypermagical beatstick of doom vs. your fists - you're ****ed (and that's before accounting for the fact that a reach build is now completely helpless - of course, you should carry non-magical copies of the weapon around just for those sitiuations, but that doesn't change the fact that it's nothing compared to the magical one).

oh noes! a wizard is fighting you! run past the minions (leave those to your wizard) and make him roll some concentration checks.

Uhm, Wizard 5' steps back? Seriously, without a reach weapon, you aren't going to make him roll concentration checks ever, and even with one, unless you have Mage Slayer, he's just going to cast defensively and succeed. Oh, and good luck hitting through his Mirror Image + Blur.

A bit higher level and his contingency whisks him away if he's not in the mood to kill you. Of course, on low level he'll probably instead just Color Spray/Sleep you to get you off his arse and have his pal Coup de Grace you in the process.

poison is an underhanded way to do terrible, nasty, hideous, and hilarious things to your enemys.

Indeed, it'd be awesome if poison didn't suck. Right now, you're paying a ton of gold for something weaker than a spell effect - and that's not forgetting the fact that you might poison yourself unless you have Poison Use (let's face it, the Fighter doesn't).

But yeah, this point unfortunately falls flat on its face. I'd love to play with poison. In fact, I intended to make my first 3.5 character a fighter with poisoned blades after finding out that poisons are available. Then I read the prices.

ring of jumping, cross class ranks in tumble, improved feint, ring of invisibility.

Hope you've got light armor there, bro!

thinking can be your best friend! you know that one chapter in the PHB, the one with the rules for all that cool stuff that you can do in combat? it was written for the fighter. fighter was made to be the master of a thousand combat maneuvers, use them. it may not be as glorious as class abilities, but the bonus feats make for something that a lot of people dont think about in terms of fighters flexibility.

Because none of this is in any ways Fighter-specific. Poisons are better left to Druids, killing Wizards is better left to other casters, fighting without weapons is best left to Druids and all the athletic combat is Rogue's domain. Sure, some Fighters (those with Dex 18) can go for it, but that's a small bunch indeed.

[Fishy]

the problem with the fighter is usually the person playing them, or not playing them. the PHB fighter is simply not as powerful as a wizard at higher levels. but there are always equalizers.

for instance, you're weapon is sundered and you dont have a backup. trip them, then initiate grapple from your vantage point of standing.

oh noes! a wizard is fighting you! run past the minions (leave those to your wizard) and make him roll some concentration checks.

poison is an underhanded way to do terrible, nasty, hideous, and hilarious things to your enemys.

ring of jumping, cross class ranks in tumble, improved feint, ring of invisibility.

thinking can be your best friend! you know that one chapter in the PHB, the one with the rules for all that cool stuff that you can do in combat? it was written for the fighter. fighter was made to be the master of a thousand combat maneuvers, use them. it may not be as glorious as class abilities, but the bonus feats make for something that a lot of people dont think about in terms of fighters flexibility.

Hunh? Every single one of those examples you listed is just as effective, if not more, in the hands of a Monk or a Rogue.

So, we should play Fighters, because they can do things that every single other character can, only marginally better?

[Morty]

Maybe becasue I didn't see so many ToB copies where I live

Huh? I thought that copies of ToB grow on trees. How else would everyone be expected to own one?

[Faleldir]

The best way to fix the Fighter is to make it a 2-level prestige class.
Prerequisite: any feat on the Fighter feat list. Monks and Paladins may freely cross-class.
Sure it's weak by itself, but where would the other martial classes be without it?

[streakster]

The other thing about the fighter, besides what Sinfire said, is that it is as boring as all hell.

In combat, you might as well be replaced with a sign that says "I make a full attack." I'm sorry? You wanted to make strategic decisions? You can pick your Power Attack value, how about that?

And fighters get no shiny toys. Most other classes, when they level up, get something new to play with. More spells, newer or better class features, something. The fighter, though, is that kid on Christmas who gets underwear. Wow, a small numerical bonus to my attack? Wheee!

At level 6, you will be making full attacks. At level 20, you will be making the same full attacks, but with higher numbers. Bow howdy. (Unless you're a gimmick Fighter. In which case, you do your gimmick as soon as you can get it and never do anything else.)

The reason people are playing Warblades is that they are what Fighters should be. They have genuine options in combat, and interesting class features beyond "Another +2 to hit." Warblades are the fighter fix.

tl;dr - Fighters are boring, Warblades are awesome.

EDIT: Fixed. Thanks Gorbash.

[Gorbash]

At level one, you will be making full attacks.

No, they won't. They get that at level 6!

[Kaiyanwang]

Not to be offending, but even if I agree that, as I said above, feats scale poorly and more class features could make the class more interesting and fun to play, if you say that you can only charge or full attack, IMHO, you are doing it wrong.

Or we can say, yes, you can only charge and full attack, but tactics change a lot regarding the kind of foe you are facing, at least in my games.

A a full attack of power attack, a full attack of knokdown attampts, a disarm follower by a trip attempt followed by a 5-foot steps followed by shield trowing to trip followed by a quickdrawing of bolas followed by...

I recognize that to play this way correctly you have to plan your feats and myself, I play gestalt so the "fighter" is the "Guerriero, warrior" (no NPC, I mean fighter +feat rogue, Teh fun), and I'd to think very well if I wanted to play a plain fighter again.

Barring that warblade is powerful, and if people like i I'm glad they can enjoy it, I don't understand why it's mandatory have the "click this to have this effect" or a cool name for a maneuver to enjoy a melee character.

But... IMHO, say that a full attack is boring seems to me pretty odd. even if you limit yourself to slaughter things, sometimes I think that it's the lack of good descriptions by the DM to make things boring

Said this, I realize that people enjoy this game in different ways. BTW, I'm the one of those melodramatic fools that enjoy 8 schools of magic, even enchantment and evocation

[streakster]

No, they won't. They get that at level 6!

Bah, typo!

Thanks for the catch, Gorbash.

[Kylarra]

Not to be offending, but even if I agree that, as I said above, feats scale poorly and more class features could make the class more interesting and fun to play, if you say that you can only charge or full attack, IMHO, you are doing it wrong.

Or we can say, yes, you can only charge and full attack, but tactics change a lot regarding the kind of foe you are facing, at least in my games.

A a full attack of power attack, a full attack of knokdown attampts, a disarm follower by a trip attempt followed by a 5-foot steps followed by shield trowing to trip followed by a quickdrawing of bolas followed by...

I recognize that to play this way correctly you have to plan your feats and myself, I play gestalt so the "fighter" is the "Guerriero, warrior" (no NPC, I mean fighter +feat rogue, Teh fun), and I'd to think very well if I wanted to play a plain fighter again.

To play that correctly you'd end up like the bard (assuming no cheese or sublime chord). You'd have a plethora of various things you could try, but you'd suck at them all, having invested in only the first one or two feats along a half dozen different chains.

[Killer Angel]

In my gaming group, I've noticed that no one wants to poke themselves in the eye with a stick. Does anyone know how to fix this?

The DM should permit to play goblin pcs.
And don't underestimate the value of a very pointy stick. It's a clever trap for all 1° lev. adventurers.

(in truth, i don't think that a fighter is SO useless. I've seen with my eyes a well builded meleer, straight core, more effective than a bad sorcerer with access to ToM. There are always exceptions, even if in this case the fault was of the sorc. player)

[Starbuck_II]

The best way to fix the Fighter is to make it a 2-level prestige class.
Prerequisite: any feat on the Fighter feat list. Monks and Paladins may freely cross-class.
Sure it's weak by itself, but where would the other martial classes be without it?

Nah, like Unearthed Arcana had Prestige Bards--
Prestige Fighter: every level grants a fighter feat. Monks and Paladins may freely cross-class.

Prerequites: BAB+5, one feat specificed fighter bonus (like weapon focus, etc).

[streakster]

stuff

I try to avoid the whole lengthy quote-conterquote things (though this thread seems doomed to Fighter Threaddom anyway), so just some thoughts.

I really don't think I'm doing it wrong. You can't use a standard attack decently, as Sinfire pointed out. (Seriously. I've tried. Take a adragon or what have you, take a fighter, and try to beat the dragon without full attacks. It isn't pretty.)

Gestalt does make it better, of course. Plain fighter, though, has to spend feats on all those options - which take away feats from his numbers - which make him cry harder. (Though the shield throwing bit is neat and makes me want to work on my Captain America warblade build again.) And of course, to kill what you've tripped and tied, you're right back to more pure damage full attacks.

It's not the names of the maneuvers (I don't get the "click" thing.), it's the options. Different maneuvers are useful in different situations, and each has its own strengths and weaknesses. Makes it fun - do I want to Bounding Assault my way to the BBEG? But there ar goblins in the way - should I shift into Pearl of Black Doubt? Tornado throw might be better - or perhaps I should just move over and use my Iron Heart Throw... Options are fun.

And even with the best DM ever, full attacks eventually end up in the "I kill another orc" territory. (DMOTR reference!) There are only so many ways to describe "I hit it with my sword" after all.

And no, I don't play Warblades out of love for optimization. I've said this before, in other threads - you could multiply all of a Fighter's stats by 100, and cut all of a Martial Adept's damage in half or whatever, and I'd still take the adept, every time.

And I like Evocation too, though I don't see how we got onto magic. Warmage+SS+ JPM? Fun. (With a Searing Charge, there is none hiyah! Sucker cultists? I'll set them on fiyah!)

Anyway, I don't want to derail this thread into a long argument (well, more than the inevitable). Just some thoughts, there.

[Kaiyanwang]

To play that correctly you'd end up like the bard (assuming no cheese or sublime chord). You'd have a plethora of various things you could try, but you'd suck at them all, having invested in only the first one or two feats along a half dozen different chains.

A thing like this.

Spoiler

Show

1° Flaw: Pathetic
1° Flaw: Inattentive
1° Power Attack
1° Improved Bullrush
1° Sunder
1° Combat reflexes
1° Weapon Focus
2° Cleave
3° Standstill
4° Weapon Spec
6° Combat Brute
6° Shocktrooper
8° Improved Critical
9° Leap Attack
10° Combat Expertise
12° Improved Trip
12° Knockdown
14° Robilar's Gambit
15° Staggering Critical
16° Overpowering Attack
18° Staggering Blow
18° Mage Slayer
20° Supernatural Instinct

Buffs and items could compensate. And it's not mandatory face always a BIIIIG enemy, you can have fun in combats with a bunch of lessere enemies, a couple of nasty, or everything together.

Don't say it's optimized, I only think that Char OPt boards poisonoed the game a little bit.

So Bard suck, too. An Ninjas. And Monks. So we should play only CoDzillas and Wizards. And CR system sucks. I wonder if could be another explaination for this.

Edit: internet problems, out of time answer.

@ Streakster I see that we both like Feats use and maneuvers not for cheese but for tactical options. Simply, the amount of maneuvers make more options available, even if I love the BASIC CONCEPT of the feats and of the fighter (less, how has been developped, as I pointed out).

Next time, Fighter//Warblade

I see your point, even if the Dragon example it's, well about a dragon. None could solo a Dragon (I'm talking with you, shivering touch). A lot of monters you hit them well and hard with a buff and a good weapon. You are gear dipendent, well yes. I like the concept of "well equipped for battle" warrior, but I accept that is not the same for everybody.

The "click" thing example: Improved disarm, and the disarming strike maneuver.

In a full attack, I've to choose to disarm or to hit, but I manage the full attack as I want. 4 attacks? 4 hits, 4 disarm, 2 disarm a sundr an hit, and so on.

Disarming strike is cool, but you can do only that that turn. A disarming strike, no flexible full attack. I realize that you can not to take the maneuver, take the feat and then take other meneuvers to obtain other effects, and overall the Warblade wins in flexibility. But I don't like, desing-wise, the whole thing, leading to "bye bye full attack" of the 4th edition.

The magic example came in my mind becasue i read always the same things:

1) all fights vs 1 monster concept
2) Don't roll [non ToB melee] roll [ToB melee] answers
3) yadda yadda batman wizard
4) yadda yadda CodZilla
5) yadda yadda ban evocation it's useless

Most of these things are meaning ful, but I think what has been done to fix it. /facepalm. Sorry for the rant, anyway.

[Faulty]

Now, you see, your fix doesn't address the main problems with the Fighter class. All you did was give them better numbers and make them better at their job, but you did nothing to address problems such as Multiability Dependency, Item Dependency, Combat Style focus, or Flexibility.

Pathfinder and a good number of other Home Brew fixes, coincidently, also fail to address these issues. As a matter of fact, Pathfinder's fix is a near carbon-copy of various Home Brew fixes commonly posted on the internet.


Here are the problems with the Fighter:



4: Multi-Ability Dependency. Almost as bad as the Monk or Paladin. Fighters need a good Int for Combat Expertise if they plan on taking it before 9th, a good Dex if they plan on taking Combat Reflexes at all (and many fighter builds practically require it), a good Con so they don't die within one round of tanking, and a good Str so they don't deal crappy damage (Power Attack). If they are focusing on the Combat Focus feat tree from PH2, then they also need to have a Wis of 13. On a 32 PB, getting between 13-20 in 4 or 5 different stats is somewhat tedious, and actually doing so will likely bite you in the ass later on (setting each major stat to 14, for example, will indeed punish you at every opportunity because your major stats and Str score are all too low).

5: Item Dependency. The Fighter absolutely cannot function if he loses his primary weapon. He can afford one backup weapon on the standard WBL, anything more than that is suicidal. While he may be able to make due for a short duration, the fact is that he is more limited than a Wizard with no spell component pouch (the Wizard has some spells that don't need spell components, and can even summon temporary spell components with a 1st level spell) while doing so. Tzeentch forbid if the DM ever uses Sundering, MDJ, or the cliche "You are all captured" trick. And Khorne save the Fighter who is in a low WBL/no Magic setting (as the odds of him getting a good weapon to do his job will be slim to none). Many DMs overlook this portion of the game, as every class requires Stat Boosters to function at an even level with appropriate CR Opponents.





I've yet to find a Fighter fix outside of the Bo9S that manages to address these issues (and even the Bo9S only manages to mitigate them to the point where you can actually do something without your WBL if you feel like it).

Not sure what to say about 1 or 2.

As for 3, I'm perfectly aware and suggest either a scaling feat equivalent to Manyshot for melee, or allowing meleers to make multiple attacks as a standard action and then making a feat to be more accurate. The thing is, this is not just as Fighter problem, so I didn't really want to include it in the Fighter class itself.

4 would require either feat changes or:

Adaptive Feat Training: A Fighter may choose feats with ability scores as requirements as if his ability score were 2 higher.

5. I dunno what to say, it's a Fighter. I've always seen him as an unparalleled master of weaponry and armour. That was the intention behind much of my class; I feel like a Fighter should be able to do more with a sword than most people, even of comparable power.

[Eldariel]

5. I dunno what to say, it's a Fighter. I've always seen him as an unparalleled master of weaponry and armour. That was the intention behind much of my class; I feel like a Fighter should be able to do more with a sword than most people, even of comparable power.

The fighter should be competent with a Mw. weapon. Those you can afford to carry around in crops (if you get your personal Cleric a Pearl of Power VI, you could get Beads of Karma'd Chain Greater Magic Weapon and they'd actually be magical). This is actually the case to some degree; Power Attacking with a standard Mw. weapon is often perfectly sufficient for most jobs. However, non-PA charger Fighters are completely useless without a magic weapon (S&B, archer, two-weapon fighter).

Also, if we decide that Weapon Focus should be Fighter's shtick (I sorta disagree, but whatever - I find that should be the domain of a specific Weapon Master PrC with Fighter being a generic template for...medium-sized Mechs), Fighter should get class features to apply those to multiple weapons on higher levels.

[Faulty]

What would you suggest?

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Rename the Warblade. Now you have a master of the sword, able to fight in any situation using any weapon, a killer of villians and a leader of men. Any other Fighter fix, IMHO, either wrecks the flavor or misses the point. The weakness isn't nmbers, it's options.

In fact, most of the problems with 3.X can be fixed by just banning core and using the following classes: PsyWar, Bard, Favored Soul, Spirit Shaman, Warblade, Swordsage, Crusader, Scout, Factorum, Wilder, Psion.

[snoopy13a]

I don't think the fighter is totally awful for low-levels. Not to mention that it isn't that complex to play. So why not just leave that as its niche? A class for low-level play for people who don't want complicated characters or for newer players?