The Role of the Fighter

[bloodtide]

So what is the roll of the fighter in D&D? I would think it's quite obvious: To fight. Quite often if a word is in the name of a persons classification or description, that word gives you a big clue as to what they do(A healer: heals people). So the role of the fighter would seem to be simple....to fight and kill monsters. You take a character, cover them with armor and give them weapons....sounds like that character might be getting into a fight.

D&D for dummies says that Fighters: These characters are warriors with exceptional combat capabilities and weapon skills. Nobody kills monsters and stands at the front of an adventuring party as well as the fighter.

If we look at any examples of any famous fighters....they are basically well known as they can fight. Just look at the list of famous fighters: Hercules, Perseus, Hiawatha, Beowulf, Siegfried, Cuchulain, Little John, Tristan, and Sinbad. They are all famous for fighting.

But this is not how most of the gaming community sees fighters. Some how most people don't think that fighters should fight.

From a recent post by another: the problems of the fighter types--the fighter is supposed to keep people from landing hits on the wizard, but there is no reason for most monsters to bother engaging the fighter.

Where and how did the idea that the fighter should be a body guard for the wizard come from? The big guy in armor with weapons, should hang back from a fight and be a guard? How do people read 'fighter', yet see the word 'body guard'?

Of course 4E goes off the rails with this idea, reducing the fighter to the lame bodyguard class. After all the 4E PH plainly says: "The fighter's role is that of a defender, which involves high hit points, good defensive capabilities and the ability to protect other party members from enemies.'' That is so odd. If I was to write the fighters role it would say a little more about..well..fighting and killing enemies.


So where does this come from? Do people really picture a fighter, say Hercules doing something like this: "Oh I see the dragon attacking the town, but it's my job to just stand here and guard Zort the Wizard''. I guess it's just me, but I'd say Hercules would charge at the dragon....

[Tengu_temp]

Tanking is useless in 3.x, because the enemies can simply walk around you. Most fighters focus on ubercharging or other ways of dealing extreme damage, or crowd control with reach weapons.

In 4e, fighters fit the defender role, but they still deal very high damage - the highest from all non-strikers, and they even beat some weaker strikers. They might be tanks, but their job is still killing things.

[Hammerhead]

It's not that Hercules isn't trying to kill the dragon.

It's that the dragon has Repulsion up, and is flying, and Hercules is kind of terrified of it for some reason.

The nerds with the bat poo and pointy hats are usually the ones who are able to step up and make the heroics happen.

[Bosh]

Because, unless you go for very specific one-trick pony builds, fighters in 3.*ed aren't much good at fighting?

But, even in the old editions and at low levels, it is massively beneficial for the party if the critters attack the fighters instead of the squishies. Also in a lot of old edition adventures, it's a lot easier to do most of your fighting in fairly narrow hallways, which makes the fighter have an easier time guarding the squishies without him having to do out of his way to do so.

[tyckspoon]

And about 15 times of 20, the 'standard' D&D Fighter will get himself killed by trying to go and fight. Monsters are generally bigger, hit harder, and have more HP than a humanoid Fighter. That's a recipe for fail. The reason some people claim the fighter should be operating as a guard for the casters is because that ostensibly gives him a use in a party where it is recognized that the casters can solve pretty much everything, and because in older editions that was actually what the Fighter did- you knew the Wizard or the Cleric could make everything a lot better if he got off that Fireball/Black Tentacles/Meteor Swarm/Flamestrike/Heal, but the initiative system the game used then meant there was a real chance he'd get hit on the head and blow the spell before he could finish casting. So you said "I'm standing in front of him and intercepting the enemies."

That said, I think you're misinterpreting pretty badly. The forum does, generally, recognize that the role of the Fighter is fighting. We just don't think he's good enough at it as-is (you can make a Fighter quite lethal with sufficient optimization, it's pretty well documented), or that "fighting" is a sufficiently important role to be the only thing a class does. The Ranger and Barbarian, for example, cover basically the same role. But they also have skill support, and spells for the Ranger, and extra class features for the Barbarian. What's the Fighter got? Feats, and 'I hit it' and 'I hit it again.'

[Waker]

While I agree that it is disheartening to see Fighters so looked down upon, I do have to say that some of your examples would be better labelled Barbarians rather than Fighters.
The issue is that there are just so many tactical ways for an enemy to avoid a fighter in the melee. The enemy can fly, become ethereal, burrow or swim, teleport... The list goes on. Often times the "Protect the Wizard" mentality came from the Fighters dependence on the mage to grant them to means to fight back. Without the Mage to cast Fly on the Fighter or using Dimensional Anchor on the enemy the Fighter is helpless.
To further complicate the issue, many of the examples listed below relied on either magical items or technique to see them through. If the Fighter is deprived of these items, they can rarely fight back. To further compound this issue, while they may have feats, Fighters lack the skills they might need out of combat. Bear in mind, while your examples are all warriors, not all of them relied on brute force for every situation.
It gets worse. While those heroes did things that put them far above other heroes, they managed to do this because they are the sole hero. D&D is a team-effort kinda game, which means that the enemies are usually built to be too strong for a single Fighter to overcome. As others have shown, this limitation does not necessarily extend to well played mages.

[bloodtide]

Because, unless you go for very specific one-trick pony builds, fighters in 3.*ed aren't much good at fighting?

How is the fighter 'not good at fighting'?

We take the iconic fighter Regdar(from Enemies and Allies. At 5th level he can do 2d6+7 points of damage to a foe. And he can swing his great sword as much as he wants. So how is 9-19 damage a round not good?

[mabriss lethe]

Mostly it's because the out-of-the-box fighter (in 3.5 at least) is kind of a piss-poor class. It's called a fighter, but it just doesn't do the job very well. It's exactly like the warrior npc class, but with feats. No class features, just feats. That does allow a good bit of customization, but it's often relegated to dip status to augment better designed classes.

Your combat options are virtually identical to every other characters' basic options, attack, full attack, trip, bull rush, etc. In all honesty, you have nothing unique to add to the equation that another class can't do. You just might happen to be slightly better at more than one of them.

On top of that, melee is completely outclassed by a well placed spell. What good is wailing on an opponent for 5 rounds to drop it when the wizard can take a single action to put the enemy out of the fight? So yeah, then there's magic....

aaaah magic. Whether you like it or not, magic is the win button of D&D. In 3.5 you start using it to make the laws of physics weep in the corner like a schoolgirl with a skinned knee... about midway through the game. If your spell slinger gets taken out of the fight, the encounter becomes exponentially more difficult.

So it turns out that the fighter's most effective use of his actions stops being "kill the baddies" and becomes "protect the person pushing the win button, then clean up the mess."

[Private-Prinny]

How is the fighter 'not good at fighting'?

We take the iconic fighter Regdar(from Enemies and Allies. At 5th level he can do 2d6+7 points of damage to a foe. And he can swing his great sword as much as he wants. So how is 9-19 damage a round not good?

This is an example of why you shouldn't use sample statblocks as an example of effectiveness. If I take a relatively unoptimized half-orc fighter, I can assume I probably have at least 18 Str, and if I grab Weapon Focus/Specialization (Greatsword) (which is a very bad idea), I can deal 2d6+6 points of damage. At level 1.

Edit: Oops. Neglected the whole "Fighter level 4th" prereq there. My point still stands, though. Redgar is terrible.

[KingFlameHawk]

There is a little some thing that you are forgetting. In 4e the fighter's role is that of a defender but that does not mean staying behind to protect wizards it means charging forward, getting up close and and keeping the fight away from the others, done primarly through marking, and allowing the other classes to do their roles; controllers hang back and blast away, leaders heal and buff and strikers do their thing to get the high damage. So you are right that the purpose of a fighter is to fight, but it is also to keep the fight focused on them and not on the others in your party.

[Siosilvar]

From a recent post by another: the problems of the fighter types--the fighter is supposed to keep people from landing hits on the wizard, but there is no reason for most monsters to bother engaging the fighter.

Where and how did the idea that the fighter should be a body guard for the wizard come from? The big guy in armor with weapons, should hang back from a fight and be a guard? How do people read 'fighter', yet see the word 'body guard'?

The fighter's job is to fight. If the monsters aren't fighting him, then he's not fighting the monsters.

Given the adventuring party (most of the "fighters" you mentioned are lone wolves), the fighter should be fighting the monsters to keep them away from the other members of the party. The problem lies in monsters going around the fighter to get to the rest of the party, which negates the entire point of his class: to fight. Since the monsters can just go around you, being proactive accomplishes little, so the fighter is relegated to reactive bodyguarding.

EDIT: Ninja'd!

[Endarire]

The Fighter as a bodyguard concept comes, in part, from real logic.

If you're a Tough Guy journeying with a Squishy Companion, you'd logically protect the Squishy Companion. Taunting enemies into attacking you is also logical.

In D&D, the Fighter tries to be a linebacker to protect the Quarterback while making the major play. Sometimes it works.

[bloodtide]

Mostly it's because the out-of-the-box fighter (in 3.5 at least) is kind of a piss-poor class. It's called a fighter, but it just doesn't do the job very well. It's exactly like the warrior npc class, but with feats. No class features, just feats. That does allow a good bit of customization, but it's often relegated to dip status to augment better designed classes.

Your combat options are virtually identical to every other characters' basic options, attack, full attack, trip, bull rush, etc. In all honesty, you have nothing unique to add to the equation that another class can't do. You just might happen to be slightly better at more than one of them.

Hummm....well this makes sense. I had never seen anyone spell it out this way before. It does make the fighter sound very bland.

This makes me look at the idea of giving fighters class features with a whole new light. I'll have to see if I can dig up some of the ones posted around here....

[AshDesert]

How is the fighter 'not good at fighting'?

We take the iconic fighter Regdar(from Enemies and Allies. At 5th level he can do 2d6+7 points of damage to a foe. And he can swing his great sword as much as he wants. So how is 9-19 damage a round not good?

At 5th level that's not that good actually, but WotC are terrible at their own games, so looking at their builds doesn't really give a good view of the game (after all, the iconic Wizard is an evoker).

Fighter's CAN be good at fighting, but not as most people would intuitively think they would be. If you're just coming to the game, it would seem like you should take all those Fighter-only feats and invest fully into your weapons, but that's a trap. The are a few ways to make a good Fighter, and they all basically come down to either doing ridiculously high damage (ubercharger et al.) or disable enemies before they can get to the Wizard (trippers). But really, they're just a janitorial crew if they're in a party with a competently played Wizard.

[Keld Denar]

We take the iconic fighter Regdar(from Enemies and Allies. At 5th level he can do 2d6+7 points of damage to a foe. And he can swing his great sword as much as he wants. So how is 9-19 damage a round not good?

That damage isn't bad. Nobody ever said fighters were bad at dealing damage. Some of the highest damage builds involve fighter levels. The problem is, fighters lack a lot of other utility. Getting folks to attack the fighter. Getting folks to talk nicely to you.

A good high level fighter in 3.5 needs to be able to do 3 things. First, block charge lanes to the casters as best as possible, and try to keep close in case the caster needs to teleport them. Second, mop up as quickly and efficiently as possible. When your god wizard deposits a stunned, blinded, prone, confused, and enfeebled giant in front of you, do your best to kill it before it becomes unstunned, unblinded, unprone, unconfused, and unenfeebled. Third, not be a liability. If you get dominated, grappled, confused, or otherwise become a jeapordy to the party, thats more resources that the casters have to expend to somehow save you.

The third part is something I'm very passionate about. All fighters above low levels should have access to some method of getting out of a grapple or other movement disable like Solid Fog. FoM is the easiest way, but short range teleports are also exceedingly useful, and easy to come by with MIC. Protecting your brain, your mind, and your head is the next goal. This can be done by taking feats like Steadfast Determination to boost your saves, or multiclassing or PrCing into things with great will saves, +stat to saves, or access to Mind Blank (Occult Slayer does this well, despite its other short fallings).

Basic fighter toolbox, in order of importance:
+Str
+Con
+Saves
Short Range Teleport
Personal Flight
Mind Blank
True Sight
Miss Chance
Freedom of Movement
Personal Haste effect

If you can lock down most of those things with class abilities, feats, or items, you can be a decently effective fighter. Things like a high AC are of rather low importance (although a decent touch AC is nice if you can swing it).

[Welknair]

Well it all started with Raistlin and Caramon...

[umbrapolaris]

The fighter's job is to fight. If the monsters aren't fighting him, then he's not fighting the monsters.

fighter = tank (if no other tank)

hmmmm... if a monster is hit by a fighter , i think its normal reaction is to strike him back, unless it receives a massive damage input from another, then it will focus the highest threat; and even if it do so, the fighter is not stick at his position, he can move toward the monster and strike him again.

[Hammerhead]

When people say a Fighter isn't good at fighting, they're not talking about damage output. They're talking about all the other things that go on in fights.

A Fighter needs to beat defenses like fear effects, rays and illusions; it needs a way to deal with flying monsters, burrowing monsters, invisible monsters, teleporting monsters, hiding snipers, enchantments, miss chances, blinding effects, bigger enemies, faster enemies, and groups of minions. It doesn't really have ways to do any of those things efficiently. You might spec a fighter to cleave some mooks, but that means your spending resources not dealing with the rest of the Fighter's problems.

The things a Fighter can do to win a fight typically rely on the spellcasters in the party. So a Fighter kind of has to keep them safe (or to be one of them) in order to do all the cool fighting man type stuff he's supposed to do.

[MeeposFire]

Lame bodyguard class?

First 4e has a fighter that actually has a job in a party unlike 3.5.

2) A fighter deals more damage than almost any defender and better than some strikers at times.

3) It is the most supported and among the best classes in 4e (many rate it the best). In 3.5 the fighter is near the bottom.

4) Fighters can use their defending abilities to pseudo strike. If you can convince the enemy to ignore you somehow (like having a cotroller force the enemy to attack somebody including an another enemy or having an ally provoke opportunity attacks).

5) The fighter has an official striker build in the slayer which is very good at laying on the pain.

In your Hercules example even the defender fighter charges the enemy (in fact that is how it defends by getting in the enemy's face) and then attacks ferociously. Unlike previous editions the 4e fighter can tell the monster "do not attack the wizard. I am more dangerous to you than the wizard". You think Hercules can force the monster to face him? You bet he can you should love the 4e fighter not hate it.

[umbrapolaris]

that is why magic items exist. in some previous edition (ad&d 1e, i think) i remember they said, the fighter will be efficient when he will get enough magic items. and before 3.x there is no feats.

[mabriss lethe]

Hummm....well this makes sense. I had never seen anyone spell it out this way before. It does make the fighter sound very bland.

This makes me look at the idea of giving fighters class features with a whole new light. I'll have to see if I can dig up some of the ones posted around here....

No need, WotC provided their own fix for the fighter.

Warblades, my friend, Warblades.

[Lans]

No need, WotC provided their own fix for the fighter.

Warblades, my friend, Warblades.

Course, Wizards are still way too powerful, but luckily wizards provided their own fix, its called the Adept

[Eldariel]

Why are Fighters expected to be the bodyguards? Well, simply because that naturally comes with their job. If a Fighter goes up to the front and engages an opponent, that opponent will be fighting the Fighter. If a really good Fighter goes up to an army, that army will be fighting the Fighter, not the guys behind him.

Fighter is certainly supposed to beat people up but the skill set of Fighter has since the dawn of D&D included, not only the ability to use melee weapons efficiently, but amazing defensive stats. That is, a guy who trains his body for his entire life can absorb a lot of punishment. And a guy who trains himself for his entire life is amazingly resilient to hostile magic, area damaging effects and so on. Now, you have people with more power but less durability (spellcasters, rogues, the like).

These people cannot do what the Fighter can; if a Dragon breaths on a Fighter, Fighter rolls back, dodges and only takes severe burns that his body can easily take, while a Wizard gets scorched. Said monsters tend to also be too formidable power-wise for a Fighter to kill alone. As such, Fighter's ability to withstand blows and engage opponents in melee naturally flows into the Fighter getting up to the skin and, not only dealing the damage he can, but also ensuring that the foe has to focus on him who can take the punishment.


Note that this here is a stroll down the memory lane; in an AD&D game, the warrior-classes (Fighters, Paladins, Rangers) gained comparatively immense amounts of HP (way higher Con To HP ratios and hit dice, along with higher "slow progression" once you passed 10), had the best save progressions on pretty much all charts (I think there was like one area where Priests, with their impressive save charts on their own right, outdid Warriors) and were able to wear heavy armor (which, unlike in newer D&D, wasn't really optional; a good armor was pretty indispensable to gain any AC and there were hardly any downsides to wearing the heaviest armor you could find).

In D&D 3.5, Fighters are actually often squishier than the squishies with Fighters' terrible saves, no extra benefits from Con combined with some multi-attribute dependency, inability to properly scale their armor class (and the fact that heavy armor is neither unique to them nor all that useful for extremely high ACs) and few defensive abilities. This is to say, I'd call you crazy if you didn't want a Warrior in your AD&D party when starting at extremely low levels. You could possibly pull it off but the fact that nobody else can really take any punishment without dying on those levels kinda makes a big sac of HP & armor rather indispensable. In 3.5? I'd call you wise.


Note that Fighters' job as bodyguards does not detract from their job of beating things up. Indeed, old Fighters were often extremely good at beating opponents up provided their weapons could penetrate the DR. And if they knew what kind of magic they were fighting, they could pick the right weapons and tactics to defeat that (though of course, magic was still stronger than muscle but it wasn't as simple as in 3.X) and there were many, many ways for warriors to more than pay for themselves. Fighters weren't just bodyguards or damage dealers, they were FIGHTERS; people who fight and thus generate all the advantages having somebody capable of fighting brings.

They were quite versatile; bows cover extremely long distances in the hands of skilled warriors, daggers and throwing knives made for great shorter range flurries, swords, axes and hammers made for different speeds and types of short range attacks each suited against different types of foes, armor and so on. Many spells (notably e.g. Stoneskin, Mirror Image and the like) could be defeated by a Fighter who knew some of the magic by simply playing into one of the many tactics in their bag on tricks and thus, Fighters weren't only anti-martialists but they had many skills useful for fighting spellcasters too. Not to mention the ability to completely interrupt any spellcasting if they were able to get up to the skin and connect for damage. This was Fighter's job; doing everything the man in the front, or the archer needs to do. Against certain foes they tie the opponent, some they can just kill, some their can disrupt and usually they do some combination of the above. That's Fighter in a nutshell. Now, if we only got back to that paradigm in this edition, all would be good.

[MeeposFire]

Of all the editions 3.5 has the weakest fighters relative to the other classes. 1e/2e fighters are useful but not as powerful as casters and are not as easily replaced. 4e fighters are powerhouses. 3e fighters are useful but easily replaceable. That is an unfortunate.

EDIT: By fighter I really mean warrior classes.

[Runestar]

I find that fighters fill in the dps role quite nicely, and can do respectable amounts of damage on a full attack (though they still need to be adequately supported by spellcasters). If you want a controller, he will inevitably be a spiked-chain trip monkey.

[umbrapolaris]

sometimes i miss ad&d 2e, when i played my Arcanist, i was always careful about my placement, cover and what ally was near me. in 3.x, it was not automatic, i can go around the battlefield without thinking too much.

[kamikasei]

So what is the roll of the fighter in D&D? I would think it's quite obvious: To fight. Quite often if a word is in the name of a persons classification or description, that word gives you a big clue as to what they do(A healer: heals people). So the role of the fighter would seem to be simple....to fight and kill monsters. You take a character, cover them with armor and give them weapons....sounds like that character might be getting into a fight.

Okay. So if the Fighter's job is to Fight, what do the rest of the characters do when combat rolls around?

Do they also fight, but in different ways? Okay, then how does the Fighter's ability to contribute in combat stack up? What sets his way of fighting apart?

Or do they not fight? What do they do then? Disappear in to null-space for the duration of the combat? Stand around being useless? Somehow assist the fighter, e.g. with buffs and healing? The first case seems unlikely, and the other two make them vulnerable targets in need of protection.

Making the Fighter the only one able to contribute in a fight is a problem just as making the Rogue the only one able to do anything when a trap shows up, except it's a bigger one because combat is a larger part of D&D. The other characters become dead weight. Iconic "fighters" have the advantage of not needing to share the spotlight with a party, being either solo warriors or able to kick as much ass as they want compared to their allies without the allies' players feeling marginalized. If, as is generally the case, the Fighter has teammates who also participate in combat, then you have to decide what sets her apart. If it were only, say, Fighters, Rogues, Clerics and Wizards, you could keep a reasonably clear separation of roles, but when you have a lot of different kinds of 'mundane' warrior (Paladins, Rangers, Monks, Barbarians...) having a gal present whose entire job description reads "fightan" doesn't provide a lot of inspiration.

Perhaps the "Clerics" and "Wizards" are as hard to damage as the Fighter, but unable to deal much damage themselves and have to rely on buffing and healing the melee characters, but they don't need their allies to protect them. That'd still be pretty hard to balance, since it'd make sense for an enemy to take out the support first to weaken the front-liners, even if the support aren't actually more vulnerable. And of course, in fact, the idea of the squishy wizard who buys high destructive potential at the cost of personal vulnerability is a common one. There again there's a call for the Fighter to act as a bodyguard.

Plus, this is all quite basic, theoretical game design stuff. As a practical matter, in fact, at least in 3.5 D&D Fighters just aren't all that great at any particular aspect of combat.

In other words, what mabriss lethe said.

[Greenish]

How is the fighter 'not good at fighting'?

We take the iconic fighter Regdar(from Enemies and Allies. At 5th level he can do 2d6+7 points of damage to a foe. And he can swing his great sword as much as he wants. So how is 9-19 damage a round not good?

A few points. First, what counts as good damage varies: it should be low enough not to cause DM or the other players to cry foul, but to allow you to contribute to the fights. This obviously varies by group, so you can't say whether X amount of damage per round at level Y is good without context.

Second, as has been pointed out, fighters can (in most cases) do good damage, but then, so can many others. Fighter isn't the only class that gets feats, and the fighter-specific ones are of relatively low impact.

Third, Redgar can swing the sword as many times as he wants, but unless he's beating a practise target or something, he has a very real limit on how long he can fight: hitpoints.

Fourth, abilities with infinite use are no more useful than abilities with finite but large enough amount of uses (despite what WotC thought).

[Gnaeus]

Side note Re: Regdar. He isn't very optimized, but he also didn't fall into any fighter "Traps". He isn't a TWFer or Sword & Board. A similarly unoptimized fighter who didn't understand 3.5 rules and for whatever reason didn't decide to go with a 2 handed weapon looks really poor compared with the damage that any of his 5th level party members can dish out,

[Greenish]

Side note Re: Regdar. He isn't very optimized, but he also didn't fall into any fighter "Traps".

Doesn't he have Weapon Focus on several weapons, or something the like, or am I just imagining things?