The Gaming Den

If you got rid of the Problem Solver ability, how balance is Tome Fighter then?

Why do people keep yelling the Tome Fighter is bad? This is a serious question.

Can we outline the argument as to how it's too much if, say, Combat School was taken down in ways I recommended in other threads, and Blitz was clarified to work on melee weapons only?

Still not balanced.

Let me explain this for you:

Frank Trollman: (a paraphrase from talking about fighters in 3.0)

"A feat should be worth more than a level of class abilities. A character gets 7 feats in a lifetime and 20 levels."

Races of War solution: Make every feat better than and 2-3 levels of class abilities.

Problem: Fighter has more feats than most classes have levels.

Solution: Not give Fighter 19 feats that are each individually better than 2 class levels.

Not solution: remove one feat.

Hmmm...

Just a quick hypothetical question, what if Tome Fighter only had a bonus feat every five levels? 1, 5, 10, 15, 20.

The tome fighter is a powerful class, but it isn't an overpowered class. Sure, you can push the envelope with the right feat choices and judicious multiclassing, but broken it is not.

In addition to piles of [Combat] feats, the Tome Fighter has Foil Action. This is good. So good that when they first look at the class, many people state that in their opinion, that specifically breaks the class.

Avoraciopoctules wrote:In addition to piles of [Combat] feats, the Tome Fighter has Foil Action. This is good. So good that when they first look at the class, many people state that in their opinion, that specifically breaks the class.

These are not people who have played the class. Foil Action is useful, but that's all.

Don't we have the whol gauntlet thing? Runng the class through equivalent CRs at 1, 5, 10, 15 and 20th level to see how it works?

Let's do that.

A let's not let JE do it. He has strange ideas about CR.

God_of_Awesome wrote:Don't we have the whol gauntlet thing? Runng the class through equivalent CRs at 1, 5, 10, 15 and 20th level to see how it works?

Let's do that.

A let's not let JE do it. He has strange ideas about CR.

It's the Same Game Tests that make everyone say that Tome Fighter is too good.

Oh alright.

May I know where to find the results?

People have done it a lot. There's one in the Races of War thread at the Wizards boards. I say it's not too much because it doesn't perform better than a Wizard.

When I originally suggested toning down Problem Solver, I was aware that foil action was the class feature that has caused the most consternation. I suggested Problem Solver because:

[*] Foil Action is a cool, flavourful, powerful ability thats useful at low and high levels but is totally different to anything a Wizard gets.

[*] Tome Fighter + Tome feats is a double helping of goodness

[*] Problem Solver gives the Fighter access to even more Tome Feats

So, I think Foil Action is perfect for the Fighter and a fantastic addition to the class. Hey, he deserves something borderline-broken, the Wizard gets enough! Problem Solver tips the balance in several of the Same Game tests by allowing the Fighter to pick synergistic feats to overcome specific problems.

Hmmm, maybe changing Problem Solver to 1/day instead of 1/hour would be suitable. It would allow the Fighter to pull out a neat trick like Giant Slayer or Ghost Rapist (or whatever the "I can hit incorporeal too!" feat is called) to get past an encounter without meaning he always has every feat he needs.

I mean seriously, with Problem Solver why even give him bonus feats? He gets every Combat feat he needs as a Swift action anyway.

Red_Rob wrote:I mean seriously, with Problem Solver why even give him bonus feats? He gets every Combat feat he needs as a Swift action anyway.

Because Giant Slayer doesn't make you win every encounter with big enemies, Ghost Raper doesn't make you win every encounter with incorporeal and ethereal foes, Mage Slapper doesn't allow you to defeat every spell caster, and none of the other feats are sure wins against any other type of foe.

Problem solver only gives one feat.

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Problem solver only gives one feat.

One feat per hour.

But yeah, OK, it is limited to one feat at a time which means you can't just go from Melee-Basher to Auto-Sniper. However, it means a Tome Fighter doesn't ever need to spend feats on things that are situationally useful, so he can just load up on fight-better feats.

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Giant Slayer doesn't make you win every encounter with big enemies.

No, however I don't think anyone has suggested the Tome Fighter is drastically broken, just a little too good against monsters of its level. Curbing one of the "I always have the perfect ability at any time" options might just make some of the encounters more iffy. I'm looking at running a 3.5 game soon using Tome rules and hopefully there'll be a Tome Fighter so I can give it a test run.

The whole point is so that the fighter doesn't run around picking up situational feats. Situational feats either require the GM to tailor adventurers to your specific class feature, or make your character less useful.

Problem solver gives the fighter a reason to care that situational feats exist without having to force the GM to take time out of his day to figure out how to make Ragnar the Ghost Raper actually able to feel like he's contributing.

Thats why the Fighter gets bonus feats - so he can get those situational things others can't bother with. If the Fighter still gets a ton of bonus feats, and doesn't need to bother with situational feats, and gets a feat of his choice each hour, and RoW powered up feats to be like class features...

Doesn't that seem a little much?

Or, put another way, I see a lot of suggestions to "fix" the PHB Fighter, but the Tome Fighter seems like a much cooler, more flavourful class to me. I haven't heard a lot of comment about the Tome Fighter other than a brief same game test and the opinion "its a bit overpowered with the new feat system".

Have people who've used it in games found it fair and balanced? Or overpowered and game warping? What about it worked and what didn't?

Most of the examples of fighters being "overpowered" that I've seen involved TWFing alchemical flasks with PBS and Blitz.

Red_Rob wrote:Thats why the Fighter gets bonus feats - so he can get those situational things others can't bother with. If the Fighter still gets a ton of bonus feats, and doesn't need to bother with situational feats, and gets a feat of his choice each hour, and RoW powered up feats to be like class features...

Doesn't that seem a little much?

Or, put another way, I see a lot of suggestions to "fix" the PHB Fighter, but the Tome Fighter seems like a much cooler, more flavourful class to me. I haven't heard a lot of comment about the Tome Fighter other than a brief same game test and the opinion "its a bit overpowered with the new feat system".

Have people who've used it in games found it fair and balanced? Or overpowered and game warping? What about it worked and what didn't?

This past summer my brother and I were players in a level 16 one shot 'anything goes' with Tome classes and feats (not combat action rewrites) allowed. I think he dipped one level of master strategist for the extra action. He kept pretty easy pace with my incantatrix divine power gish (with a few tome feats, obviously), but both of us completely overshadowed the other three players (one hastily made warblade, one artificer type character that took days for the player to build, one *gestalt* archer type). The warblade existed only for white raven tactics and ironheart surge, the gestalt archer type did fairly good damage, but not on par with my wizard or the fighter, and the artificer type basically didn't do anything worthwhile (was supposed to be good in melee due to custom items, but the fighter and I overshadowed him in pretty much every way).

And keep in mind, this is a wizard with the strongest prestige class of note for wizards played to break the RNG in every way as well as stack on immunity to everything. The tome feats didn't even make him more potent except for Two Weapon Fighting (useful) and the combination of combat school and whirlwind (daze everything on the field with my 300' fly speed and massive reach).

The tome fighter kept pace. No custom items, no custom feats, just one dip into one other class (which let everyone else live longer mostly), and he kept pace with the most min/maxed gish a denner has ever made.

Yes, Tome Fighter is a bit too strong.

Were those other three classes Tome classes?

Doesn't sound like it.

-Crissa

God_of_Awesome wrote:Were those other three classes Tome classes?

One of the characters was a Cleric//Multiclassed out the ass gestalt, the other was an archivist/crafting PrC that explicitly lets you craft whatever the fuck you want (including wraithstrike items) at the DMG guidelines as law. The third was a warblade (which is the only class that fucking matters out of BoNS and is seriously the best nonmagical melee character printed in 3.5).

So who gives a shit? They were all very powerful characters that would pull well above their weight in the SGT. Only the uber min/maxed wizard gish played by the best optimizer did better. The rest weren't close.

So yeah, they could easily have been tome classes. Island in Time is a pretty damn good effect. So is continuous giant size. So is dealing 500 damage a round at range. Not like those are anything short of level appropriate and the Core+Tome Feats RoW Fighter fucking CURBSTOMPED them.

So, the 3.5 classes sucked, except for the one that didn't, which proved that the Tome is overpowered?

-Crissa

Crissa wrote:So, the 3.5 classes sucked, except for the one that didn't, which proved that the Tome is overpowered?

-Crissa

The archivist had continuous giant size effecs, wraithstrike, righteous wrath of the faithful, superior resistance, and draconic polymorph effects. You call that suck?

And again, one of the other characters was a cleric 16+gestalt. The other had the ability to full attack twice in a single round. This is not *suck*. Tome fighter is *that good*.

How does the Tome Barbarian compare to the Tome Fighter?

I'll throw an example encounter, a CR 18 Mature Adult Red Dragon.

How does a Barbarian 18 fare against it?
How does a Fighter 18 fare against it?

Edit: For the sake of the argument, let's also say that the dragon is an enclosed space, about nine times its width (So it could stand in the middle and be a space of itself away from the wall) but only twice its height (Not enough to fly, I presume).

You don't want to do a Dragon.

If I DM that Dragon, it will kill both of them, yes, even the Tome fighter.

Pick something that doesn't get spellcasting a faster fly speed than any land speed, and the ability to choose it's battleground.

Also, specify the environment of the encounter.

Try a CR 14 enemy that isn't a Dragon.

EDIT: Only if we assume that the PCs are hogtied, paralyzed, ability damaged to zero in every stat, dead, and have already exploded from spending too long on the positive energy plane.

Also, their brains have atrophied to the size of yours.

It's a CR 18 monster with a 400ft fly speed. If it doesn't kite people it's a fucking CR 12.