More fighter hate.

[Psychic Robot]

Fighters suck. Stop trying to fix them. Please, for the sake of TGD's sanity, stop. They are a hopeless class. You cannot fix the fighter without redefining the entire class. Why? Because fighters can never do anything level appropriate ever, and that's how people like the fighter class.

It's because of the name and fluff of the class. A fighter fights. He gets bonus feats. In theory, this should work out--you should be able to make a berserker or a swashbuckler or a knight with a fighter. But, in the end, you can't because the fighter class is a lie. It pretends to be a 3,000 piece Lego set, but it's really just an incomplete collection of well-worn Lincoln Logs.

The fighter fights. That's all he does. He can never do anything else or he's not a fighter. He can't do magic because then he's a gish. He can't fly because then he's not human. He can't pick up Medusa's head and use it to turn an enemy to stone because that's a plot power.

You must accept that the fighter class can't do anything outside of fighting. Stop trying to fix it. This is a class that receives two skill points per level and a crippled skill list. Its power relies almost entirely on magic items. If you want to make the fighter a gadgeteer, that's fine, but you can't expect people to be okay with class features that grant magical artifacts because characters do not randomly grow magic items while adventuring.

Think about it this way:

A fighter can stab things and shoot a bow. A vampire knight has preternatural strength and reflexes, drinks blood, regenerates wounds, grows wings, and has the ability to do all sorts of other crazy stuff based on the type of vampire you're trying to emulate.

A fighter can stab things and shoot a bow. A witch hunter has spell resistance, infuses his weapons with mage-slaying goodness, rips apart a wizard's protective spells, and has all sorts of tricks up his sleeve for dealing with spellcasters.

A fighter can stab things and shoot a bow. A feral warrior flies into a berserker frenzy, grows fangs and claws, has bestial strength and cunning, sends his enemies fleeing in terror, and has a host of other interesting abilities.

A fighter can stab things and shoot a bow. A shadow assassin sneak attacks, fades into the shadows and emerges elsewhere, slays his enemies with a single blow, commands shadows to do his bidding, drains the life from his foes, and does a slew of other, interesting things.

Are you seeing the problem here? If so, then I hope you can see the solution: the fighter class needs to die. It has no value because its bland, flavorless existence forces it directly into the realm of the mundane.

The fighter should not exist. Despite their own mundanity, even swashbucklers, knights, barbarians, rangers, and the like can be made to do useful things because they have fluff supporting them. The fighter cannot because he's boring. He has two skill points a level. He can't do anything outside of "stabban" and "shootan."

If you want level appropriate characters, make them have fluff that supports them being level-appropriate. The fighter can never magically become someone who teleports and flies because that would ruin what the fighter is: a guy who does swording.

I know it's been suggested already, but here's what you need to do if you want level-appropriate martial characters.

1. Dump the fighter class entirely.
2. Stat out martial classes (barbarian, rogue, etc.) that go on for five levels.
3. Create prestige classes that upgrade those martial classes into level-appropriate characters (feral warrior, shadow assassin, and so on).

OR

1. Dump the fighter class entirely.
2. Create base classes that have enough fluff to support them doing high-level antics like teleporting and flying.

OR

1. Dump the fighter class entirely.
2. Explain in the DMG that DMs need to put in crazy magical artifact equipment that upgrades the martial classes into doing level-appropriate things.

Either way, please, please, please, please stop making thread after thread about how you can give the fighter the ability to cast spells without him actually casting spells. It's a fruitless endeavor.

[Username17]

Fair enough.

-Username17

[Apalala]

So...how about a thread for fixing he Tome fighter then?

[tzor]

Fighters suck. Stop trying to fix them. Please, for the sake of TGD's sanity, stop. They are a hopeless class. You cannot fix the fighter without redefining the entire class. Why? Because fighters can never do anything level appropriate ever, and that's how people like the fighter class.

First of all I don't think fighter's "suck" and I never will. Nor are they "hopeless." The class probably needs a complete rewrite anyway, not because it "sucks" because it lacks the "fantastic" that is required for level based fantasy. Contrary to popular notions there is more to being fantastic than magic (although we tend to get hung up about that as well, magic is simply a substitute for technology period end).

In fact I think we need to turn the tables. It's not that fighter's suck, it is that we let wizards become fighters. The whole paragram of the wizard has changed to the fighter; dishing out more damage; being able to take more damage. The average wizard has turned into a "tank" for all practical purposes; he doesn't need nobody. He is the gold standard but he breaks the whole synergy class party structure.

Second the "fighter" as normally written is really Mr. Jr. Woodchuck Knight; the armor is so assumed in the package that without it the class is as lame as the horseless paladin. This is why, in 4E you see the completion of the notion that the armorless fighter is a "Ranger" (who originally was a lightly armored fighter with widard / druid spells for high level fluff).

[Lago PARANOIA]

2. Stat out martial classes (barbarian, rogue, etc.) that go on for five levels.

This was probably the only decent idea that d20 Modern ever had.

They fucked it up all to hell, of course, but it was a good idea.

[Judging__Eagle]

That's fair. I'm guessing a 5 level class, then PrCs, right?

Or, go all out and write up outsider classes?

[Psychic Robot]

It depends on the narrowness of the niche, really.

Barbarian can easily segue into feral warrior within the confines of the barbarian class--that's pretty thematic and it doesn't really disrupt the concept of "angry guy." It's like how a druid is a broad class with a ton of options that all fit under the thematic umbrella of "nature caster."

Some of the classes are more specific, though. Shadow assassin, witch hunter, and the like all are rogue-type classes, but they are significantly more narrow than something like "rogue" or "swashbuckler." People want to be able to play a "thief" class because that's something that's been there for a long time. Then you get into a sort of Matrix thing where people are okay when they have the illusion of choice but they break down when they don't.

If, for instance, the rogue suddenly started teleporting and commanding shadows, people would throw a shitfit--and rightfully so, given that they weren't told that their thief was going to morph into a shadow assassin. If, however, the rogue is five levels long and then they have to pick a PrC, one like shadow assassin, they're going to be more okay with it. Unfortunately, some will still be upset that they can't play rogue 20 because they wanted to be a thief, not a teleporting shadowmaster. (A good example of this is in 4e. Why is my character suddenly a demigod, exactly?)

It's a bit of a hard decision to make, actually. However, with the right fluff, I think people are willing to accept "weeaboo fightan magick" with their mundane characters. For instance, a rogue that can deftly maneuver around the battlefield, trick enemies into attacking themselves and their allies, and cripple their opponents with sneak attacks will probably be accepted by the majority of players. Obviously, there's going to come a point when the witch hunter class is simply more impressive than the rogue because of its Blessed Bullets of Purity and Soul-Cleansing Strike, but the rogue has enough flavor behind it to give it useful things to do.

I'm starting to ramble, but there's also another option of building multiple paths--you might even call them "paragon paths"--into a class.

Suppose, for instance, you have a "rogue" chassis for a class. Good Reflex saves, 6 + Int skill points per level, sneak attack damage, and so on. The class itself has four build options:

1. Thief.
2. Swashbuckler.
3. Witch Hunter.
4. Shadow Assassin.

The thief gets more skill points, bonus sneak attack damage, evasion, uncanny dodge, and all that stuff. The swashbuckler gets a bonus on Fortitude saves, uncanny dodge, the ability to do neat tricks with social skills, special feinting abilities, and so on. The witch hunter and shadow assassin get the previously-mentioned class features of witch-hunting and shadow assassinating.

At some point, you're going to have to give the thieves and swashbucklers super maneuvers (something along the Diamond Mind ToB style, probably), but people are going to be more accepting of those special maneuvers if their characters slowly grow into those abilities, if they're part of the base class (rather than being a splatbook thing), and if the fluff works with their character concept rather than against it.

As a final note on the last point--fluff working against concept--we can see how this negatively impacts 4e. When I stat out a fighter, I expect fightan and killan. When I come across a charm effect or healing abilities in the fighter abilities, I'm stopped cold and am left scratching my head as to what my character is supposed to be. If my character concept were Battle Priest of Kord, I'd be more willing to accept those things, but the weird effects in 4e have been thrust on me.

[RandomCasualty2]

Honestly, you may be able to just get away with blending the fighter class with the rogue and being okay.

Give him 8 skill points per level, maybe even 10, given fighters often dump int. Then make his swording ability level appropriate.

Nobody really seems to call the rogue a bad class and he's basically just a skills + stab things class. I really can't see why you can't just have rogue and fighter be pretty much the same thing and split it based on Warrior and Ambusher paths. The ambusher is pretty much your rogue sneak attacker, and the warrior is just a straight up combatant. But both get a ton of skills.

[tzor]

A rogue is not a fighter. I think I saw the answer burried with the rules of 4E, it's an odd notion buried within the rules of most classes; it's a notion that combat is like a chess game. There is more to it than that, but the notion of the fighter as tank is really a notion of the fighter as an "in your face" up close and personal style of attacker who basically messes you up and keeps you from responding in kind. This is completely different from the constantly moving rogue.

[Kaelik]

A rogue is not a fighter. I think I saw the answer burried with the rules of 4E, it's an odd notion buried within the rules of most classes; it's a notion that combat is like a chess game. There is more to it than that, but the notion of the fighter as tank is really a notion of the fighter as an "in your face" up close and personal style of attacker who basically messes you up and keeps you from responding in kind. This is completely different from the constantly moving rogue.

Tzor, do you even realize what you are saying? The part of the chess game that is "in your face" and up close and personal is the mother fucking pawn!

Yes, the Fighter as he stands is a fucking pawn, and the idea of him naturally becomes the idea of a pawn. The problem here is simple. Fuck your pawn in the ass.

People don't want to play the Pawn, and if people like you think that playing the pawn is fine as long as everyone else has to play a non pawn, then you can play a lower level character than the rest of the party.

[RandomCasualty2]

A rogue is not a fighter. I think I saw the answer burried with the rules of 4E, it's an odd notion buried within the rules of most classes; it's a notion that combat is like a chess game. There is more to it than that, but the notion of the fighter as tank is really a notion of the fighter as an "in your face" up close and personal style of attacker who basically messes you up and keeps you from responding in kind. This is completely different from the constantly moving rogue.

Only if you buy into heavily niched classes, which honestly, D&D doesn't, except when it comes to fighter types.

A D&D spellcasters are fucking anything and everything. He can be a fireball tosser who conjures illusionary walls or a guy who turns invisible and summons monsters. You can also blind and stun enemies with battlefield control, translate any language, teleport and turn yourself into a wartroll to fight people.

That's all the shit that a wizard can do.

Saying that it's wrong for the fighter class to be both a heavily armored full plate tank and a mobile swashbuckler type is bullshit. The wizard can get away with being fucking everything. Yet handing out proficiency in every martial weapon to the fighter somehow gets the realism police out there. Because shit as a fighter you have to fit in this super small square of what you can do. We're not even content to just say you can't do magic. No. You have to wear a specific type of armor and you have to even specialize in a specific weapon. I mean you can forget about being a swordsman and an archer. Fuck you're lucky if you end up being competent using a longsword and a warhammer. And that's before you start finding magic weapons that further pidgeonhole you.

That's similar to if we took the wizard and forced him to choose a single spell, and said, "This is all you can cast ever. Maybe you learn little variations on it or make the spell a bit stronger, but you never learn anything else. Ever."

I mean just imagine that... you never learn any other gimmicks ever other than your one signature spell. Wizard players would be up in arms and furious. Yet this is the bullshit the fighter has had to live with since day one.

The fighter really needs to break out of his box. I don't know why the fighter shouldn't be able to be both a lightly armored warrior and a heavily armored warrior, you seriously don't even have to make him choose. He could get abilities for both and depending on if he's strength based or dex based, you go from there.

[Ice9]

I like the Fighter/Rogue merge idea. And I don't think it should be "pick a fighting style during character creation" either - you should have access to all styles, depending on what equipment you're using.

So for instance:
Deadly Precision (sneak attack): requires light armor and a light weapon.
Unyielding Mountain: requires heavy armor and a shield
Zone Control Master: requires a reach weapon
Shade Provider: requires a bow
Charging Lunatic: requires a two-handed weapon
Wheat Harvest (minion slaying): requires two weapons.
... and so forth.

Depending on how the styles were designed, you could either use all the ones you qualified for at a given time, or maybe just one at once. If the latter option was used, you could ditch the weapon requirements entirely and just switch styles as a swift action.

[MGuy]

I think the rogue and fighter could stand to remain separate. The rogue is supposed to be the "skill man" and the fighter (from the PHB) is supposed to be the combat feat guy. The only problem with fighters and rogues is that the sub sytems they are supposed to use aren't up to par. As evidenced by the Tome fighter if you change how the feats work the fighter gets to be a much more interesting option. So too would the rogues be better if on top of sneak attack their abundance of skills meant more. The wizard is only bad ass because its mechanic (magic) is bad ass. If magic were like feats no one would want to be a wizard. its as simple as that.

[ubernoob]

Literally every class is required to be about equal in combat for the combat system to be balanced. You cannot have "Fighter" be the "combat guy" because that means everyone that is not a "Fighter" is NOT contributing equally in combat.

Fullstop. You cannot have rogue be "skills guy" and fighter be "combat guy" because that means there is no balance.

[Orca]

Ideally all the classes need to be able to do stuff outside combat too. The obvious 'martial source' way is to be able to do stuff with pure skill - sounds like the rogue, doesn't it?

In other words, I'm agreeing that merging fighter and rogue sounds like the start of a fix in D&D 3.5e.

[ubernoob]

Ideally all the classes need to be able to do stuff outside combat too. The obvious 'martial source' way is to be able to do stuff with pure skill - sounds like the rogue, doesn't it?

In other words, I'm agreeing that merging fighter and rogue sounds like the start of a fix in D&D 3.5e.

And if the rogue is just as good as the fighter in combat the game isn't balanced because the rogue does shit in AND out of combat. If the rogue doesn't do level appropriate shit in combat, then the game is ALSO not balanced because the rogue cannot contribute equally in combat.

Fullstop. You cannot make a "combat guy" and a "noncombat guy" without either saying that one cannot be a PC or having a game be totally completely imbalanced.

And if we're saying "Fuck balance" we might as well just build from the ground up and at least create something interesting like RIFTS.

[tzor]

Tzor, do you even realize what you are saying? The part of the chess game that is "in your face" and up close and personal is the mother fucking pawn!

Yes I do, but this is in terms of moves; chess suffers from the problem that every piece has zero defence and thus any attack will kill it. Personally I view the fighter more of the line of the rook; the ranger more in line of the knight. But there are other "chess" like moves that you can do in combat in 4E. For the fighter alone the following give a chess like quality to the game:

Tide of Iron (At Will Lvl 1)
Pssing Attack (Encounter Lvl 1)
Get Over Here (Utility Lvl 2)
Come and Get It (Encounter Lvl 7)
Shift the Battlefield (Daily Lvl 9)

As opposed to the Ranger

Hit and Run (At Will Lvl 1)
Fox's Cunning (Encounter Lvl 1)
Yield Ground (Utility Lvl 2)
Cut & Run (Encounter Lvl 3)

This is what I mean by chess, moving the pieces around on the board, allowing for the movement of friend and foe as a part of the class feature, avoiding opportunity attacks in the case of the Ranger.

[MGuy]

Literally every class is required to be about equal in combat for the combat system to be balanced. You cannot have "Fighter" be the "combat guy" because that means everyone that is not a "Fighter" is NOT contributing equally in combat.

Fullstop. You cannot have rogue be "skills guy" and fighter be "combat guy" because that means there is no balance.

Whoa whoa whoa. I never said that the skill guy couldn't do anything in combat. You can totally have a combat guy and a skill guy. There's no reason you can't. There is no reason why skills can't be made to do something in combat. There's no reason you can't make combat feats have out of combat effects. You can totally have a combat feat that creates difficult terrain that you can later use to tear up the ground to make an irrigation system. You can use spells in and out of combat. Why can't skills and feats do the same?

[ubernoob]

Literally every class is required to be about equal in combat for the combat system to be balanced. You cannot have "Fighter" be the "combat guy" because that means everyone that is not a "Fighter" is NOT contributing equally in combat.

Fullstop. You cannot have rogue be "skills guy" and fighter be "combat guy" because that means there is no balance.

Whoa whoa whoa. I never said that the skill guy couldn't do anything in combat. You can totally have a combat guy and a skill guy. There's no reason you can't. There is no reason why skills can't be made to do something in combat. There's no reason you can't make combat feats have out of combat effects. You can totally have a combat feat that creates difficult terrain that you can later use to tear up the ground to make an irrigation system. You can use spells in and out of combat. Why can't skills and feats do the same?

Making any distinction at all means the two won't be equal. Orca was right in that rogue and fighter are basically the same concept and there is no problem with simply giving the rogue's "out of combat skill abilities" to the fighter.

[MGuy]

What are you talking about? There's no reason you can't make them equal. Again they are just classes that specialize in using different aspects of the game. If you make the aspects of the game that they specialize in equal (or at least equalish) there's no reason that it can't be balanced. Fighter masters feats, rogue masters skillz and wizard masters magic. 3 different classes, using 3 different aspects of the game. You make the aspects comparable then the power level of the classes become comparable.

[ubernoob]

What are you talking about? There's no reason you can't make them equal. Again they are just classes that specialize in using different aspects of the game. If you make the aspects of the game that they specialize in equal (or at least equalish) there's no reason that it can't be balanced. Fighter masters feats, rogue masters skillz and wizard masters magic. 3 different classes, using 3 different aspects of the game. You make the aspects comparable then the power level of the classes become comparable.

Skills scale by int score. If skills are actually equal to feats, then any rogue with an int score higher or lower to the int score you think rogues will have will have the wrong power level to be balanced against a fighter.

Seriously, skills are just a fucking subsystem. Combat abilities can't come from a subsystem without a massive headache.

[MGuy]

That's If they do. I believe part of what I said was:

If you make the aspects of the game that they specialize in equal (or at least equalish) there's no reason that it can't be balanced.

So the first step would be to make the aspects equal instead of letting them stay unbalanced. Feats, Skills, Magic are all subsystems. The combat mini game is MADE of subsystems. There's to hit, saves, effects, etc etc etc. If you make all the subsystems have comparable power within that minigame then... well I already said this part twice.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

MGuy: The problem with your idea is that you can only balance the different aspects against each other if you know that they'll all get roughly equal playing time in the campaign. Unfortunately, D&D is supposed to support a wide variety of playstyles, with the default setup ("We raid dungeons and caves for a living") skewing toward high-combat games. Thus, any scheme based on making some people better at combat than others is likely to leave some characters inferior for most of the game.

And I'm not even getting into the playability problem your scheme would have even if you succeeded (half the players either twiddle their thumbs or wander off for half the session).

[MGuy]

There's a misunderstanding here. I'm not saying make one better at fighting than all the others. I'm suggesting that they are all good at fighting, but fight primarily using the different sub systems. Though I agree with the way DnD is now wouldn't support this but if the creators can make the sort of drastic changes they did between the editions I'm more than sure a more modular idea like this could work. It would work better if all of it were more modular though. If it worked where anyone could grab any spell, a feat, or skill and utilize them, while the classes had abilities that either gave you extra options or made you better at using one thing better than others.

[Arijkos]

That's fair. I'm guessing a 5 level class, then PrCs, right?

Or, go all out and write up outsider classes?

I like his idea a lot! Problem is, if you make these 5 levels too good, everyone dips into themand the figter class itself is meaningless again (slightly different from now, but similar). You could of course try to design all non-casting classes as 5 level core's with further PrC's or Power Classes or whatever attached to them, but thats a lot of work.
Anyway, thanks for this idea, I'm tossing some stats around at the moment