Give Tips on Making a Better Fighter!

[wayfare]

Hey all, just looking for some tips to making better combat class.

A few ideas i have are:

1) Granting the ability to inflict status effects
2) Granting the ability to inflict death attacks
3) Making ranged attacks better

Are any of these enough? What else is needed?

[Kilbourne]

Must not be a Single Attribute Dependent class, but not so Multi-Attribute Dependent that they are impossible to stat efficiently.

[wayfare]

I was thinking Strength and Dexterity dependant, with Constitution being a nice thing to have.

Would there be an issue with allowing the fighter to stack status effects onto each attack of a full attack?

[Mongoose87]

There are a lot of good ideas here.

[wayfare]

There are a lot of good ideas here.

ToB is pretty great, its true.

I just want to give the basic fighter class a little love.

[Godskook]

Read the [Ascendant] feats in my signature. Provides a solid standard for improving the class in terms of upgrading his feats. Some of the feats are a tad overpowered, and a few aren't finished, but I've playtested them a little, and the result is a fighter who *scares* spellcasters, and at the same time is quite versatile, +15 rank bonus on all skill checks by level 20. Sure, that's not enough to make him a primary skill-monkey, but he's the definitive standard for the "back-up".

[Ziegander]

For something really simple let the Fighter ignore ability score requirements of feats on the Fighter feat list. To go totally crazy with that concept let the Fighter ignore ALL requirements of feats on the Fighter feat list (don't worry, I've checked, even stuff like Whirlwind Attack or even Weapon Supremacy at level 1 doesn't grant game-breaking or even overpowered ability).

For a more complicated route set the bonus feats out in a separate column and give the Fighter actual class features as well as bonus feats. Make sure these class features are generic enough to benefit Fighters of all styles, but also relevant abilities that give the Fighter something worthwhile.

Use both of those ideas at the same time!

Rewrite feats if you're that ambitious. Since Fighters operate on feats and feats alone they need those feats to offer fun, powerful, and unique abilities.

Create new Fighter-only feats! Heck, make Fighter-only versions of existing feats that are literally strictly better than the originals! Why not?

[wayfare]

I was thinking of adding the following class feature -- though I'm not certain if its too complicated and where to draw the line in terms of effects:

Spoiler

Show

Brutal Blade: The Fighter gains bonus damage to all weapon attacks equal to half his level. If the fighter has a natural weapon, or has the Improve Unarmed Strike feat, he may apply this damage bonus to attacks made with these weapons.

Artful Blade: The fighter may sacrifice bonus damage gained from Brutal Blade to inflict an additional effect upon his opponent. The fighter may enhance an attack with 1 additional effect, but may enhance multiple attacks each round.
An opponent can only be targeted by Artful Blade once each round.

Enfeebling Strike
-1 Damage
Effect: The fighter strikes his opponent in the stomach, neck, or groin, debilitating his opponent. On a successful strike, the opponent must make a Fortitude Save (DC 10 + Strength Modifier + ½ level) or be Nauseated for 1 round.

Deafening Clout
-1 Damage
Effect: Especially useful against spell casters, the warrior delivers a ringing blow to his opponents ear. On a successful strike, the opponent must make a Fortitude Save (DC 10 + Dexterity Modifier + ½ level) or be Deafened for 1 round.

Distracting Flourish
-2 Damage
Effect: The fighter keeps his opponent occupied with a series of swift strikes designed to draw attention away from his flank. On a successful strike, the opponent must make a Will Save (DC 10 + Dexterity Modifier + ½ level) or be rendered Flat-Footed for 1 round.

Dizzying Blow
-2 Damage
Effect: The fighter delivers a brutal strike to his opponent, briefly knocking his enemy senseless. On a successful strike, the opponent must make a Fortitude Save (DC 10 + Strength Modifier + ½ level) or be Dazed for 1 round.

Wall of Blades
-2 Damage
Effect: The fighters harrying attacks make it difficult for the opponent to move. On a successful strike, the opponent must make a Reflex Save (DC 10 + Dexterity Modifier + ½ level) or be Checked for 1 round.

Blinding Cut
-3 Damage
Effect: A precise strike opens a cut near an opponents eye. On a successful strike, the opponent must make a Reflex Save (DC 10 + Dexterity Modifier + ½ level) or be Blinded for 2 rounds.

Stunning Blow
-4 Damage
Effect: A forceful blow renders the opponent unable to defend himself. On a successful strike, the opponent must make a Fortitude Save (DC 10 + Strength Modifier + ½ level) or be Stunned for 1 round.

Maim Foe
-6 Damage?
Effect: The fighter deals his opponent a disabling blow. On a successful strike, the opponent must make a Fortitude Save (DC 10 + Strength Modifier + ½ level) or suffer 1 point of ability damage of a type chosen by the fighter.
A second failed save 24 hours later results in ability drain.

Mortal Blow
-8 Damage
Effect: On a successful strike, the opponent must make a Fortitude Save (DC 10 + Strength Modifier + ½ level) or be reduced to 0 hp.

[Adamantrue]

There isn't anything inherently wrong with the Fighter, so much as the problem with the Feat selection. Basically, WotC fell short on making Feats to scale through to level 20. It would be the equivalent of there being no Spells available for Wizards to choose past 5th level.

There isn't any good reason Feats couldn't have scaled better at higher levels. Everything in ToB could have been used to enhance options for the more mundane Classes like Fighters & Monks (as Feats instead of Maneuvers & Stances).

At the risk of pimping my own stuff, I had started brewing up some of my own Feats to try and help the scaling issue. Its still a pet project I play around with on my own time, but there didn't seem to be much interest in it here. Its not an original idea either, as an Article on this site seems to follow along the same thought process.

I think anything beyond that needs to be something other than a Fighter. Want something more brutish & melee oriented, take the Barbarian. More finesse oriented, the Swashbuckler. Sword & Board, the Knight. Incorporate magic...well, we have a ton of them. But the Fighter itself really shouldn't be changed any.

[Amiel]

I would suggest action points, that scale per level, which can be spent to boost one's defense, emulate a feat, make an extra attack, stabilise one's current hit point total et al.

[Dead_Jester]

Personally, I believe the core fighter chassis is, and always will be, bad. Fighter feats, even the best, are just numbers. No versatility, no new toys, just more or bigger numbers. That, combined with the fact that a fighter can be made useless by 2 low level spells (fly and your favorite arrow blocking/repelling spell), are the true problems of the fighter class. It doesn't need bigger numbers, it already has amongst the biggest.

And honestly, I don't believe death effects are the solution. Death effects might seem ok, but remember that if you can use it, so can your DM, and a death effect is always a minimum 5% chance of killing one or more of your PC's, in a very random and unclimatic fashion ...

It's not because the wizard/CoDzilla/any other tier 2 and up caster can do it that everyone should be able to do it, and as a matter of fact, I believe no one should have instant death effects, as they make every encounter a stupid game of rocket tag.

However, that doesn't mean SoS or SoL are out of the question, and I highly recommend that any so called fighter "fix" have a few ways of causing debilitating conditions, preferably targeting all 4 defense stats. The reasoning behind this is that instant death, although trivial at higher level, tends to murderise a lot of good roleplay opportunities and epic last ditch efforts to survive, whilst status effect tend to create them. As such, I believe they are better abilities, both from a gaming and roleplaying perspective.

As for buffing ranged attacks, bringing it up to par and, more importantly, making it so that a character can both fight effectively at range and in melee, are definitely some good ideas.

The abilities you suggested fix the condition problem, but don't have any real cost. Damage is ridiculously easy to boost, and -8 damage for a death effect is nothing, especially if it's damage that is already free. Also, there seems to be a scaling issue, as 1 point of ability damage for -6 is definitely not in the same ballpark as -8 for a SoD, especially if stun is -4.

[wayfare]

Thanks all, for the great advice!

@Jester: I'm not too much of a fan of death attacks either, but I figured fighters could have some type of access to this as a special type of precision damage -- a headshot, a stab to the heart. My original thought was to make this a -10 damage effect, but it seems a bit late at that point.

As for ability damage, I'm really trying to figure out how I should factor that in, what sort of damage penalty it should take: maybe 1d4 points of ability damage at a -5 damage penalty?

Also, I'm not certain that this was clear, but Brutal Blade and Artful Blade work together -- to activate these enhancements, you have to sacrifice the extra damage granted by Brutal Blade. So -4 damage to access Stunning Blow requires level 8 to use; -8 damage to activate the Mortal Blow ability can't be accessed until level 16.
Could anyone help me re-word this mechanic so it makes more sense?

[Dead_Jester]

I know artful blade uses the bonus damage from brutal blade, but even with only 10 damage to use at maximum, it still is free debuffs all the time, and death effects on 4 different opponents every turn (whirlwind attack and spring attack suddenly sound much more interesting) with absolutely no cost.

[wayfare]

I know artful blade uses the bonus damage from brutal blade, but even with only 10 damage to use at maximum, it still is free debuffs all the time, and death effects on 4 different opponents every turn (whirlwind attack and spring attack suddenly sound much more interesting) with absolutely no cost.

Would limiting the number of de-buffs work. For example, if you could only use Artful Blade maneuvers once each round?

Things like whirlwind attack would become much better, as you could apply a single effect to multiple opponents.

Alternatively, you could only apply the effects of brutal blade once each round, reducing damage output and limiting the number of artful blade maneuvers to 1.

Are either of these solutions functional?