The Ultimate 3.5 Fighter Fix

[arangatang]

Remove the Monk, Barbarian, Fighter, Rogue, Paladin and Ranger classes from the game. Introduce a new base class, the FIGHTAR.

The FIGHTAR is a five-way Gestalt (Unearthed Arcana) of the Monk, Barbarian, Fighter, Rogue and one of Paladin or Ranger (barring Spells). Flavour to taste.

AT 20th level, you become a 20th level Wizard.

Balanced?

[Username17]

Balanced?

Reasonably decent at levels 1-8 and 20, still sucks in the middle. Of course, no one really cares what happens at level 14, so it should work for most games.

-Username17

[Tshern]

Lots of lol though.

[Cynic]

Remove the Monk, Barbarian, Fighter, Rogue, Paladin and Ranger classes from the game. Introduce a new base class, the FIGHTAR.

The FIGHTAR is a five-way Gestalt (Unearthed Arcana) of the Monk, Barbarian, Fighter, Rogue and one of Paladin or Ranger (barring Spells). Flavour to taste.

AT 20th level, you become a 20th level Wizard.

Balanced?

I'm going to make an implicit assumption that this post isn't meant as a troll so I'll answer honestly.

All it would mean is that you would still be suffering from MAD and too much MAD. I can see most people going with paladin over ranger just because of the inherent cha to saves, mount, resistances etc...

A lot of stuff is unnecessary because most of the monk's abilities affect specifically unarmed unarmoured combat and it doesn't fit most of the archetypes (Sword & boarder, spiked-chain fighter, dual wielder, bow-fighter, etc...)

Let us highlight the MAD

monk requires wisdom to function.
Fighter/barbarian requires strength & possibly dex to function.
To make good use of a rogue's umd capabilities and skills, int might be nominally useful.
The defense comes from the pally's charisma.
Con is really not that useful in this sense because we are already dealing with a d12 and while a good con might be useful, we'll put it in the backburner for now.
~

Now feats
~~
One of the fighter's main draws (while it isn't a very good draw) is that they can have the feats. With the inclusion of the other classes, you pretty much get a lot of different feats to beginwith. imp trip/grapple etc..

So the fighter's feats become even more worthless to a degree. But they are only feats so just take dragon's toughness 40 times.
~

Weapons, if you go the rogue route, you are awesome because you flask it with full bab & full saves and crazy defense. In this case rage is really not of much use at all.

If you go any of the other weapon routes, you are always set to use your pally's mount as a flanker and you are good.

Don't even mention the mounted combat builds.
~

Now at level 20, becoming a wizard is okay but it's useless. This is already a strong class and becoming a wizard just means that you've gone and completely done a 360 loop.
~

Now the most important piece of information, go read the tomes class fixes and read some of the design discussions on the board and see what has been done before just jumping in making what will be judged as a worthless post by a troll. But I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say it's not.Otherwise my migraine compels me to rip your heart through your mouth.

[Bigode]

Isn't that actually way overpowered at low levels?

[virgil]

From what I recall, the melee types are normally relatively balanced up to (and including) level 5; and the rogue remains balanced all the way through with judicious application of sneak attack.

[koz]

Isn't that actually way overpowered at low levels?

Isn't this guy a serious troll?

[Bigode]

Isn't this guy a serious troll?

I think he's mocking the piles of fighter fixes at WotC, not us. And Frank said "decent at 1-8" - I think it's way more than that.

[Username17]

The Rogue sneak attack makes it pretty damn hard core at low levels, it is true.

-Username17

[koz]

I suspect Frank was being sarcastic. Lack of tone in a text-only medium makes it harder to understand, though.

[Psychic Robot]

Obvious jocular post is obvious, stop crying troll, you pisspantsing whorebitches.

[Roy]

I was expecting Tome of Battle personally.

[TOZ]

Clearly the only thing keeping it from being gamebreaking is that it only gets the paladin or ranger spell progression, not both.

Edit: Thanks AW. I was in such a hurry to comment I didn't read close enough. With that, this is clearly the greatest melee class evar.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Actually, it doesn't get spells from either class.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Actually...

This gives me an idea for a relatively easily PCGen-compatible class balance fix for a game I'm running.

How do the following balance out with 40 point buy and saner hiding/sniping rules?

- Specialist Wizard with 1 extra spell of each level and no banned school
- Gestalt Fighter/Sorcerer with armored casting
- Gestalt Rogue/Ranger without the ability to sneak attack with grenadelike weapons but with the ability to use sneak attack at any range.

[Bigode]

It doesn't have a familiar.

Aldragon, find something extra for the fighter.

[arangatang]

Thanks for the feedback, guys. I've read your critiques and have decided to implement the following changes to make the class more balanced at all levels:

Alignment: Any lawful

At level 9, the FIGHTAR becomes two level 9 FIGHTARs. They need not share the same feats, skills, equipment, memories, etc. You receive an extra FIGHTAR character to control every two levels after 9th level.

At level 9, your WBL doubles. It doubles in this fashion every level two levels after 9th. This extra wealth usually comes in the form of magical items of your choosing spontaneously erupting from enemy wizards. There is no save against this effect.

Pending DM approval, the extra wealth may take the form of Spelljammers.

[Bigode]

Thanks for the feedback, guys. I've read your critiques and have decided to implement the following changes to make the class more balanced at all levels:

Alignment: Any lawful

At level 9, the FIGHTAR becomes two level 9 FIGHTARs. They need not share the same feats, skills, equipment, memories, etc. You receive an extra FIGHTAR character to control every two levels after 9th level.

At level 9, your WBL doubles. It doubles in this fashion every level two levels after 9th. This extra wealth usually comes in the form of magical items of your choosing spontaneously erupting from enemy wizards. There is no save against this effect.

Pending DM approval, the extra wealth may take the form of Spelljammers.

At level

[koz]

Words fail me.

[Avoraciopoctules]

It doesn't have a familiar.

Aldragon, find something extra for the fighter.

Hmm. Channeling spells through attacks might work. I need something that doesn't require much extra coding.

Alright, how about the ability to quicken a spell of max spell level = class level / 4 rounding up... once every 2 rounds?

Also, I should note that character levels would range from 4-10 in this game.

EDIT:

This thread is awesome. I am adding it to my link portfolio, right next to http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.ph ... 49&page=10 (post #286)

[Roy]

[Bigode]

Hmm. Channeling spells through attacks might work. I need something that doesn't require much extra coding.

Alright, how about the ability to quicken a spell of max spell level = class level / 4 rounding up... once every 2 rounds?

Also, I should note that character levels would range from 4-10 in this game.

I don't see why the per-round limitation.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Fine by me. Consider it gone.

[TOZ]

Balance reasons Bigode. However, I think every 1.5 rounds would be reasonably balanced.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Let's see... I could do that with 1d4-1 rounds. That would allow occasional moments of casting 4 spells in half as many turns, but more often than not there'd be a significant enough delay that you'd have to rely upon other abilities.