The Gaming Den

"Oh yeah, I'm a member of secret society X3." *secret handshake*

The question of what fighters do outside of combat is an old one, and up until now, the only answer I've seen is "make weapons". However, much of the source fiction has fighters pulling membership or knowledge of some random society or organization out of their asses at some crucial moment. For example, in Tinman, Cain, the token fighter, gets the party shelter, knowledge, and to the next step of the story just by knowing that the blue smoke coming from a chimney denoted the inhabitants of the town as belonging to some sort of resistance organization. He didn't roll a massive diplomacy check, he didn't pick the munchkins up by the neck and crack them over his knee, he just whipped out the magic phrase and turned their attitudes from hostile to friendly(if not helpful) because he knew the group. This is what fighters do outside of combat, they use their knowledge picked up from being in a mercenary company, resistance movement, or even the tyrant's army to unlock social doors that would otherwise have the bard or rogue risking a hell of a lot by lying until a knowledgable person detected it and decided to apply consequences.

Now, granted, any class could conceivably do this, but it makes the most sense for martialists who have little in the way of non-combat abilities(or even usefulness) short of the paladin saying "Come on guys, look at the bulge in my shorts and let us in!" Fighters have always, in the source fiction, belonged to secret organizations or influential armies, and possessed fearsome reputations that unlock the plot without a drawing of swords, and without simply looking pretty.

The PHB Fighter sucks, but Frank and K's RoW Fighter helps for the type of Fighter that you are looking for. Heck, they get all Knowledge skills as class skills.

IMO every skill should be class skill for every race and class.
The number of skill points then determines the amount of dedication each specific job allocates to "out of combat" stuff, at times.

In most cases, such a change allows characters to not de-rail their skill leveling when multiclassing.
Sometimes pausing certain skill tracks, like getting a level of Fighter after a bunch of Rogue, means the character just doesn't have the time to devote to their extra-martial interests (too much time swingin that blade in the woods) and that's fine by me.

So, yeah, if any warrior wants to focus their humble skill point resource in Diplomacy, Sense Motive, and Bluff rather than Jump, Swim, and Profession (Gymroom Circle Jerk), that should be OK.

Basically rogues need to die and fighters need to eat them.

The rogue and the fighter are both people who kill stuff with swords. Only the rogue kills with swords and gets skills.

Well IMO Rogues should get Bonus Combat Feats in place of Sneak Attack increases, and Sneak Attack become cumulative feat(s).

With this setup, the only difference between the two is in skill versatility, which is easily widened with INT, and Hit Points, which are easily amped with CON.

So IMO, no difference between the two really.

A Fighter with UMD, a Rogue chock full of Tome feats for Combat, whatever.

As Dumbledore says, I'll allow it.
... If I were DM of a campaign like that.

I don't think rogues should even exist. Sneak attack should just be a bunch of combat feats or fighter class abilities you can take. Hide/move silent should be on the fighter's skill list.

Well IMO Rogues should get Bonus Combat Feats in place of Sneak Attack increases, and Sneak Attack become cumulative feat(s).

This has been tried and it blows.
Noone goes door to door singing the praises of the Unearthed Arcana Generic Classes, do they?

-Username17

The major difficulty with Rogue is that it's a super-broad category rather than a single set of skills/abilities.

A rogue can be a diplomat, a con-man, a thief, a lookout, or a trapfinding burglar. And in combat, they're your favored flanking partner.

As it is, the archetype they're closest to is probably the burglar/flanking buddy, what with the automatic skills at finding/evading traps, and sneak attack. You could probably break rogue into a few more narrow classes, with the trap bonuses being changed into social or stealth bonuses.

Fighter suffers from similar problems. A fighter can be a fencer with a rapier and a chain shirt, or they can be a tank with a greataxe.

And the problem with *that* is every fighter gets the same setup, regardless of equipment/combat style. And that setup does not include abilities that synergize with their function, except in a "I get a +1 to Hit With This Weapon" way.

I know Swashbuckler was a dire failure in an implementation, but I think they had a spark of the right idea there: You break fighter up into several combat-oriented classes, and give each one abilities relating to their niche. Just offhand, I can think of:

-Tank: Heavy armor. Maybe abilities to make them a roadblock/door opener, like extra AoO's at enemies trying to come near them, and bonuses to charge, bull rush, and overrun, and they get to be the party pack mule.

(I promise you, that ability was one of the things that sold me on Frank and K's work--that they included some utility along with the combat abilities).

-Fencer: Like Swashbuckler. Only, uh, better. As in, gets AC bonuses to help them keep up with using light armor, some kind of bonus damage progression that's a lot more than 2d6 of Precise Strike, maybe Uncanny Dodge (because your archetypal lightly-armored fighter is always twisting out of the way of the stab coming in from behind).

-Archer: You're godly with a bow.

-Dirty Fighter: Maybe tactical abilities, like tweaking with the flanking abilities. As well as some Sneak Attack.

-Weapon Specialist: If the Core Fighter has any archetype it fits, this is it. Fighter-only feat chains like Weapon Specialization and Weapon Focus and Improved Critical (well, it's not a chain, but, still) encourage fighters to give their favorite weapon a name and sleep curled up next to it.

-Duelist: The Duelist PrC makes me sad, because it's really just a fencer. A real Duelist would be someone who specializes in fighting other *people*, not monsters. If it were core 3.5, I'd rack them up with Improved Combat Maneuver feat series and give them bonuses to be used when they're fighting one-on-one. If I were doing it with Tome Material...I don't know. Probably relating to the Edge, though.

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1197126065[/unixtime]]
Noone goes door to door singing the praises of the Unearthed Arcana Generic Classes, do they?

Almost no one in the Wiz forum acknowledges UA's existence and validity, let alone use a single variant from it.

sigma999 at [unixtime wrote:1197114721[/unixtime]]Well IMO Rogues should get Bonus Combat Feats in place of Sneak Attack increases, and Sneak Attack become cumulative feat(s).

With this setup, the only difference between the two is in skill versatility, which is easily widened with INT, and Hit Points, which are easily amped with CON.

So IMO, no difference between the two really.

A Fighter with UMD, a Rogue chock full of Tome feats for Combat, whatever.

As Dumbledore says, I'll allow it.
... If I were DM of a campaign like that.

Tome Fighters with the Apprenticed background get 6+Int skill points per level and every important Rogue class skill except for UMD, and, less importantly, Disguise and Sleight of Hand.

The idea was for it to be a class feature that fighters come from some sort of colourful background that gives them knowledge, and not make them spend skill points on being able to do so.

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1197126065[/unixtime]]

Well IMO Rogues should get Bonus Combat Feats in place of Sneak Attack increases, and Sneak Attack become cumulative feat(s).

This has been tried and it blows.
Noone goes door to door singing the praises of the Unearthed Arcana Generic Classes, do they?

-Username17

I think that has something to do with the quality of feats...

Prak_Anima at [unixtime wrote:1197158240[/unixtime]]The idea was for it to be a class feature that fighters come from some sort of colourful background that gives them knowledge, and not make them spend skill points on being able to do so.

What, like Bardic Knowledge? Called Mercenary Connections or something?

NoDot at [unixtime wrote:1197158708[/unixtime]]I think that has something to do with the quality of feats...

Yeah, they resembled d20 Modern talents, and that's just wrong.

However, it was funny when I first found it in the SRD since 2 years prior I had developed an identical system of 3 classes, each tied to a save type.
The class abilities were all modular.
Unfortunately, all the problems that multiclassing brings arrived too.

So, if someone had the "tri-class system" or whatever we'd call it, and uses Tome feats/class abilities turned into feats (like Fire Mage or Jester's, for instance), what do you think?
Would that work at all or is there some glaring flaw I'm just not picking up?

Here's something that might help a bit, after some tweaking:

Mandatory Gestalt

NoDot at [unixtime wrote:1197194521[/unixtime]]Here's something that might help a bit, after some tweaking:

Mandatory Gestalt

not some tweaking, a complete overhaul.

A complete overhaul to what? (I know now that it wasn't completely clear.)

NoDot at [unixtime wrote:1197210040[/unixtime]]A complete overhaul to what? (I know now that it wasn't completely clear.)

Gestalt

Gestalt actually multiplies the problems of PHB balance rather than addressing them in any meaningful way. The problem with character classes in D&D is that they get stuff which is wildly disproportionate in utility and strength one from another. In Gestalt you get the "best of" two classes. So if you take two classes which are low on the utility and strength pole (like Monk and Fighter, for example) you get substantially less in your "best of" stockings than if you had taken two classes which were high on that list (Rogue and Druid for example). Even worse, many classes overlap in their "best of" piles and many other classes do not.

The obvious example is that two classes with the same good saves actually gain zero saves from combining, while two classes with different good saves gain more good saves. But more generally still if you mix two classes with active abilities you'll have to pick one ability or the other to use each turn (gaining options but not power) while combining a character class with passive abilities simply numerically stacks in to whatever you were doing (gaining power but not options).

So for example, the Druid/Rogue gets all good saves, the best skill points, the best skill list, and the ability to Wild Shape Sneak Attack for literally dozens of sneak attack dice a turn by level 8. On the flip side, combining Sorcerer and Wizard just gives you more spell slots. Essentially you can run more buffs on yourself at a time I guess and fall back on Sorcering for offense - but the character really isn't revolutionarily different. And at the extreme end combining Ranger and Barbarian hardly changes anything at all. Attack bonuses aren't particularly different, nor are skills or saves or hit points, or anything.

-Username17

I was refering to Gestalt with the Generic classes, although I later realized that doing so only alters the limited selection from McStab, McSneak, and McBlast to McStab-Blast, McStab-Sneak, and McSneak-Blast. (And then there are the issues with how viable melee is at high levels...)

But what about the situation with PrCs that provide a semi-gestalt effect, such as Mystic Theurge?

By 20 the end result is a 75% Arcane / 75% Divine caster. While weaker than full gestalt, it's not only balanced with the rest of D&D, but damned popular.
If gestalt could do that with any 2 classes, what then?

If your character is actually less than two level 15 characters at level 20, then he sucks. If he had the full power and actions of two level 15 characters, he'd still only be level 17.

Cielingcat at [unixtime wrote:1197244748[/unixtime]]If your character is actually less than two level 15 characters at level 20, then he sucks. If he had the full power and actions of two level 15 characters, he'd still only be level 17.

With the wealth of a level 20 character, maybe not.

20th level is a bad comparison point for a number of reasons. Not the least of which is that Mystic Theurge runs out long before then.

The most flattering comparison point is at level 16 when Mystic Theurge has gotten all the juice squeezed out of it. At that point you are essentially a Wizard who traded his top three levels of spellcasting in order to have secondary casting as a 13th level Cleric. Sure, this comes at the expense of not being a Geometer or getting Wizard substitution levels or something - but whatever. 13th level Cleric is quite a breakpoint - you can resurrect the dead.

Here's the problem: the Core Only Wizard hast greater planar binding at 16th level. He can literally conjure a 13th level Cleric and still have 8th level spell slots available to cast his remaining 8th level spell a bunch of times (probably to mindblank the party is he didn't take Abjuration as a banned school) or metamagic his lower level spells or whatever.

And that's literally the best possible comparison point. Being a Mystic Theurge is always a suboptimal choice. Sure, at low levels it is disasterous, but even at the optimal level it's never that exciting.

-Username17

How about a feat that grants spellcasting of a single basic class, with a virtual spellcaster level equal to 1/4th to 1/3rd the character's total levels?

Sure it's sub-par but there are gish builds and such requiring spellcasting that could use a way in that doesn't drain the precious warrior levels.