How do we get rid of the Fighter

[...You Lost Me]

Sorry, I'm confused, how exactly is feudal Japan (the place were kenpachi was introduced, yeah the soul society but it's fucking feudal Japan) but with magic and guys running around swording soul eating demons not in genre for a setting that is ostensibly about a world ruled by feudalism where there's magic and guys running around swording various monsters?

Because eat a dick. Duh.

[SlyJohnny]

There's nothing wrong with wanting to play Han Solo. There's nothing wrong with wanting to play a Badass Normal and still succeed, and it's not necessarily demanding special narrative dispensation. There's nothing wrong with not wanting to cast spells in a Sword and Sorcery game. All this hate for grognards and neckbeards and whatever is fine if you just want to make your own homebrew and play amoungst yourselves, but if you actually want to design something that has appeal beyond your clique, you have to meet people half way and not say "you want to play a sellsword who made good in my mid-high level game? fuck you, make a gish wizard with the same spell choice as everyone else, or gtfo".

Having said that, it's usually bad RPing if you want to play a Guy That Hits Things while everyone else is actually engaging with the plot and devising clever solutions to complex problems. And the fighter as written is definitely part of the problem where the mechanics don't suggest interesting fluff. You can make a farm boy who got handed and spear and drafted into the army and then works his way up into being a griffin-taming mounted warrior, but you can't make Conan or a warlord or anything else that might have interesting prospects.

I like Frank's idea of eventually leveling up into Angel Knight or whatnot. Then it seems to be it's just a question of designing enough options that noone is butthurt about a direction their character is being forced into (as some people were, with Book of Nine Swords). Then the only people you're saying "fuck you" to are the people that don't want to develop the fighter concept and make it go anywhere interesting at any time.

[Sigil]

What the fuck? What sort of non combat situation is aided by foil?

Because foil lets you interrupt literally any action in close range and prevent it from happening. Dumbass party member decides to stab that guy you're interrogating? NOPE. Your dog about to walk in front of a wagon and get run over? HEY DOG. Someone about to spill the beans on some sensitive info? POCKET SAND. It really is useful, if you are creative, because literally everything a character or NPC does is an action of some sort. And foil is, conveniently, a mechanic unique to the fighter.

And no, arbitrary spell stealing is a terrible measure to give non combat utility, because basically never is the BBEG conveniently casting the exact utility spell you need out of combat within 60ft.

Bad example on my part, but is there some sort of ability that fits the fighter flavor that would increase his utility? Like the how Samurai gets to cut through spells? Or something?

[Kaelik]

Because foil lets you interrupt literally any action in close range and prevent it from happening. Dumbass party member decides to stab that guy you're interrogating? NOPE. Your dog about to walk in front of a wagon and get run over? HEY DOG. Someone about to spill the beans on some sensitive info? POCKET SAND. It really is useful, if you are creative, because literally everything a character or NPC does is an action of some sort. And foil is, conveniently, a mechanic unique to the fighter.

So it isn't, unless you are dealing with something so colossally meaningless and low level that no one gives a shit, and all possible utility becomes obsolete at level 4 when "hands" stop being an interesting utility function.

I mean, I don't have any fighter levels, but I can sure as hell interrupt people and call my dog. And so can Commoners because talking is a free action. (Okay, really they can't make a handle animal check, but so what.)

And yeah, if your example of non combat is "my party instigates combat, and then I block them" you are full of shit.

[Voss]

Good thing we have you as the stalwart defender of not only the proper way to play D&D, but the proper way to define D&D. Thank you, Lord Mistborn, for saving us from our own stupidity!

If the "genre of D&D" is Forgotten Realms fiction and the such, then the fighters on it will reflect all the mechanical and conceptual fail that Fighting men got riddled with during D&D's less than fair story. If it's King Arthur / LotR / the Bible then nobody seems to be over 7th level in there and you'll of course lack actual high level examples of play.

Both of you can eat a dick, you two know full well what the source material for D&D is.

Yeah, it is King Arthur/Robin Hood/LotR/the Bible, blatantly and explicitly so.
Unless you mean 4e when you say 'D&D,' of course.

[SlyJohnny]

Because foil lets you interrupt literally any action in close range and prevent it from happening. Dumbass party member decides to stab that guy you're interrogating? NOPE. Your dog about to walk in front of a wagon and get run over? HEY DOG. Someone about to spill the beans on some sensitive info? POCKET SAND. It really is useful, if you are creative, because literally everything a character or NPC does is an action of some sort. And foil is, conveniently, a mechanic unique to the fighter.

So it isn't, unless you are dealing with something so colossally meaningless and low level that no one gives a shit, and all possible utility becomes obsolete at level 4 when "hands" stop being an interesting utility function.

He did specify "imagination" as a prerequisite. And he wasn't literally proposing the primary function of it was to rescue pets. Stop being so fucking autistic.

[Heisenberg]

'How do we get rid of the fighter?'

Cast any fourth level or higher spell at him that requires a will save.

Sorry, couldn't resist. : )

[Sigil]

Yeah, I was really using those examples to show that you can use foil action to prevent people from doing things, moving, or even speaking. According to the XPH there are even completely things count as actions, so if you had read thoughts going you could prevent someone from thinking a specific thought, at least once.

[Kaelik]

He did specify "imagination" as a prerequisite. And he wasn't literally proposing the primary function of it was to rescue pets. Stop being so fucking autistic.

No, he was literally proposing that the primary function was to prevent your party members from murdering captives before you have finished interrogations, because saying "Stop" would presumably be ineffective, but attempting to repeatedly foil every action they take for the next forty minutes of them ignoring your wishes would be.

Because he has exactly zero instances in which speaking would not accomplish the same effect as foil action.

Yeah, I was really using those examples to show that you can use foil action to prevent people from doing things, moving, or even speaking. According to the XPH there are even completely things count as actions, so if you had read thoughts going you could prevent someone from thinking a specific thought, at least once.

Except of course, that the entire point is that outside the scope of combat, stopping people from doing things with foil action is meaningless. Every single one of your examples could be done equally or more effectively by a commoner taking an action to speak. I mean, let's look at your favorite "you can stop speaking" thing.

Round 1: As a free action, someone slips up and is about to spill the beans.
Immediate action: You throw sand in his face to stop him.
Round 1: As a free action, he continues to slip up and spill the beans, because talking is a free action so he can do this an infinite amount of times, but now he hates you for throwing sand in his face.

As compared to:
Round 1: Someone slips up and is about to spill.
Commoner Response: Talks over him telling him to not say that.
Round 1: He stops talking and doesn't hate the Commoner.

I mean, I suppose if you really want to try to institute game time into conversations where no one else can talk until the guy who is talking finishes, you can do that, but of course, then I could point out how you were flat footed, so you couldn't even take an immediate action to foil anyway.

I have personally prevented a person from saying something he shouldn't. It is actually possible without throwing sand in their face, and that is the problem with your hypothetical utility. It doesn't exist.

[Midnight_v]

I'm.... actually sort of confused. Didn't this already get, well, solved? I thought the F&K Tome Fighter did exactly what this thread sets out to discuss. It has an acceptable power level, has interesting an viable abilities, is fun to play, and does not go over into territory that would enrage grognards (well, I'm sure it enrages someone, everything enrages someone). I mean, yeah, it's still CALLED a fighter, but at this point "Fighter" is RPG jargon that everyone identifies with, and this one is actually a good representation of that concept.

Have I missed something here? If so, how?

Personally, Sigil, I think it really did solve the problem, but several years ago, when lago first started this he said he hated the tome fighter and that it was part of the problem.
Foil really represented the "bullshit protaganist" batman, indiana jones, Drizzt power thats lets melee guy kill balors.

It was basically the fighter that I always wanted to play.

Despite all the bullshit that he spews, and the rage that passes between us Kaelik really illustrated to me why the tome fighter could actually be pretty broken in terms of power when illustrated how a 16th level Tome Fighter could kill a bevy of 20+ level threats. . .

Which is why when the Tob got brought up and I said you can give the sorcerer a sword and good bab, and people would still not be happy with it. I am adamant that the people who want to get rid of the fighter aren't even concerned so much with "Can we build a mechanically viable fighter". Due to the existence of the tome fighter, it becomes pretty clear you can do just that, course you'd have to find a sweet spot where it wasn't broken, but mechanically viable? Yeah it can be done.

Opinion varies on the tome melee classes. The tome Samurai, Barbarian and Fighter can all iajutsu, mash or thwart your face just fine. Some people even think that within their narrow focuses they are, if anything, overpowered. That's because Barbarians don't fail saves and both they and samurai can hit you for all of the damages. Meanwhile, fighters have a "Lol, no" ranged touch attack that lets them counter... stuff and can pick up enough feats that they just drown you in attack riders. So, yeah, in combat, they can stomp them some ass and there's actually some justification for casting some buff spells on the Tome Fighter rather than just sending more dire badgers into the breach. And in its way, I'll take that over the core Fighter. However, Tome Fighters still don't Scry or travel the Planes under their own power, and a fair number of denners think that is bad for the game if you just have classes whose whole purpose is to math people to death in lieu of having abilities that can solve non-combat problems.

Whipstitch really hits it on the head here. The tome Melee classes are MORE than viable in combat. . .
However... a Tome Samurai gets:

Ancestral Guidance (Sp): At 5th level, a Samurai may seek guidance from his ancestors. This counts as a commune effect that can be used once a day. A samurai can also seek guidance from other peoples' ancestors if they are available. This works like a speak with dead effect that may be used once per day.

and anyone with gather information can take the:
Detective feat: http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Detective_%283.5e_Feat%29
(which lets you cast "legend lore" when it becomes available for everyone else)
Without seriously hampering the combat portion of the character.

Elothar Warrior of Bladereach: (the instructional joke class) illustrates how you can Jolly well make something like:

Ways and Paths (Su): At 7th level, an Elothar Warrior of Bladereach can make his way back to any plane he's ever been to. By wandering around in the wilderness for three days, he can make a Survival check (DC 25) to shift himself and anyone traveling with him to another plane

and start getting over the bullshit aspect of fighters not being able to "get there" or whatever.

That right there converted to a survival skill feat like detective and its ilk. Are a great fix for the "WELL, HE"LL NEVER TELEPORT US THERE!" argument.

Not that he should have too. Also a large part of the problem is that some of these Grogs still want to play revenge of the nerds. Every so often, when you make the fighter NOT suck... you'll get answers like "THE FIGHTER DOESN"T "DESERVE"..." good things. It's weird...but yeah thats why you can't please Grognardia, and should stop trying.

You can however, please the people that want to play Kenpachi, and King Kull, Final level han solo and yea, Doomsday. The idea that people should be punished for that is... just as bad as the grognards. IMHO, thats where me and lago fall out.

I know you can honestly play Captain America (Tome fighter version)and be better than the comic book version, while succeding at everything.

Some people won't accept that though, and someone's going to be unhappy with whatever you do. . . Finally, I apologize for the length of this post.

[Drolyt]

I'm.... actually sort of confused. Didn't this already get, well, solved? I thought the F&K Tome Fighter did exactly what this thread sets out to discuss.

Opinion varies on the tome melee classes. The tome Samurai, Barbarian and Fighter can all iajutsu, mash or thwart your face just fine. Some people even think that within their narrow focuses they are, if anything, overpowered. That's because Barbarians don't fail saves and both they and samurai can hit you for all of the damages. Meanwhile, fighters have a "Lol, no" ranged touch attack that lets them counter... stuff and can pick up enough feats that they just drown you in attack riders. So, yeah, in combat, they can stomp them some ass and there's actually some justification for casting some buff spells on the Tome Fighter rather than just sending more dire badgers into the breach. And in its way, I'll take that over the core Fighter. However, Tome Fighters still don't Scry or travel the Planes under their own power, and a fair number of denners think that is bad for the game if you just have classes whose whole purpose is to math people to death in lieu of having abilities that can solve non-combat problems.

So you want the fighter (and other nonspellcasters, from here on out when I say fighter I mean all martials as a group) to be viable both in and out of combat? This requires a few steps. First, fighters need more noncombat abilities. They don't have to be magical, although they should probably have the option at least, but they have to be varied. This does not conflict with the source material, look at Conan the Cimmerian, in D&D he basically requires rogue levels to do what he is supposed to do. Second, those noncombat abilities need to scale well to all levels of play. For example in D&D climb becomes useless pretty fast and needs to be upgraded somehow. Third, vancian casting needs to die. So long as there are classes that can solve any problem because they know basically every spell ever it will be impossible to have games where characters who can't do that can contribute. All spellcasters should work like sorcerers.

Bleach or Dragon Ball

Naruto ninja's [] zoro from one piece [] the hulk.

Kenpachi

This mentelgen is why the fighter is not a valid fucking D&D class, because all of the examples you morons can think of for the high level fighter are out of genre for D&D.

What genre is that? Because where I'm standing a 20th level wizard has more to do with The Martian Manhunter than Gandalf. Unless you also want to scale back the spellcasters you have to accept that fighters need to draw on source material outside of sword and sorcery.

Good thing we have you as the stalwart defender of not only the proper way to play D&D, but the proper way to define D&D. Thank you, Lord Mistborn, for saving us from our own stupidity!

If the "genre of D&D" is Forgotten Realms fiction and the such, then the fighters on it will reflect all the mechanical and conceptual fail that Fighting men got riddled with during D&D's less than fair story. If it's King Arthur / LotR / the Bible then nobody seems to be over 7th level in there and you'll of course lack actual high level examples of play.

Both of you can eat a dick, you two know full well what the source material for D&D is.

Yeah, it is King Arthur/Robin Hood/LotR/the Bible, blatantly and explicitly so.
Unless you mean 4e when you say 'D&D,' of course.

Let us back up. Quite aside from dealing with high level spellcasters, the D&D fighter is so poorly designed that he in fact cannot handle those sources. Robin Hood and Aragorn can almost be represented by the ranger, maybe with some multiclassing (Aragorn probably has some levels of Paladin and Marshall), but the fighter represents nothing well, and some characters are impossible in D&D. There is basically no way to represent any but the most mundane legends of the Knights of the Round Table, certainly not the early Celtic version of King Arthur. Samson similarly does not work in D&D, since even the Tarrasque has trouble destroying buildings in these insane rules. Honestly, the rules for destroying things are probably the first thing that should be changed.

[FatR]

There's nothing wrong with wanting to play Han Solo.

Incorrect. Han Solo is forced to go on completely fucking different adventures than Luke for the most of the campaign, so a mixed party clearly did not work here.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to play a Badass Normal and still succeed, and it's not necessarily demanding special narrative dispensation.

Not in many fantasy settings, where the situation is explicitly "Use some sort of mojo or be a sidekick at best".

[ishy]

2. ToB is not taking a sorcerer and giving him full BAB then calling him a fighter. That is a horrible joke. I probably give ToB more credit than most of the posters on these boards, but I'm not delusional: a sorcerer with decent spell selection is much stronger than a martial adept.

Actually ToB is taking a sorcerer + giving it full bab + a martial sauce. The reason the ToB version is so much weaker is because off the martial sauce. If the classes were stronger the book wouldn't be as accepted as it is. The whole design conceit of the book was creating martial spells.

[zugschef]

2. ToB is not taking a sorcerer and giving him full BAB then calling him a fighter. That is a horrible joke. I probably give ToB more credit than most of the posters on these boards, but I'm not delusional: a sorcerer with decent spell selection is much stronger than a martial adept.

Actually ToB is taking a sorcerer + giving it full bab + a martial sauce. The reason the ToB version is so much weaker is because off the martial sauce. If the classes were stronger the book wouldn't be as accepted as it is. The whole design conceit of the book was creating martial spells.

you're talking nonsense.

[ishy]

No I'm not.

[zugschef]

No I'm not.

yes you are. the whole resource mechanic is useless out of combat because nobody knows what a fuckin encounter is. the idea was not to give non-casters plot affecting powers of their own, the idea was to make combat more diversified than auto-attack for these characters.

[edit] btw, this is exactly the point lago is trying to make: while the book had some interesting ideas, it didn't grasp what was fundamentally wrong with the fighter (and consorts).

[Drolyt]

you're talking nonsense.

No I'm not.

yes you are.

Exactly the sort of discourse I signed up for when I joined this board.

Seriously though, maybe in the minds of some idiots on the Internet giving fighters nice things automatically equates to making them a sorcerer. It doesn't matter, because that is bullshit, and martial adepts are in no way sorcerers. Neither do they have "weaboo fightan magic", because their abilities suck ass compared to any of the most popular fightan anime, Dragon Ball, Fist of the North Star, Yu Yu Hakusho, Hunter x Hunter, One Piece, Bleach, Naruto, you name it, they kick the warblades ass.

[zugschef]

you're talking nonsense.

No I'm not.

yes you are.

Exactly the sort of discourse I signed up for when I joined this board.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y

[Drolyt]

you're talking nonsense.

No I'm not.

yes you are.

Exactly the sort of discourse I signed up for when I joined this board.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y

Gotta love Monty Python.

[Midnight_v]

Dudes. Stop fucking around. LOL

[Kaelik]

Third, vancian casting needs to die. So long as there are classes that can solve any problem because they know basically every spell ever it will be impossible to have games where characters who can't do that can contribute. All spellcasters should work like sorcerers.

No you idiot. Storm Lords and Snowscapers and Cold Dudes and Conduits have absolutely no problem with going along with Wizards and Clerics. You don't need to kill vancian casting, there is an obvious place for someone who does specific things out of combat better than the Wizard and on the fly because they have a limited section of at will abilities.

The problem is that you, along with everyone else, recognize that you could never at any point give a fighter any abilities that make them valuable with a Wizard out of combat, because the concept of fighter sucks dick. But nothing stops real concepts like Blood Warrior from being able to fit next to Wizards.

[Drolyt]

Third, vancian casting needs to die. So long as there are classes that can solve any problem because they know basically every spell ever it will be impossible to have games where characters who can't do that can contribute. All spellcasters should work like sorcerers.

No you idiot. Storm Lords and Snowscapers and Cold Dudes and Conduits have absolutely no problem with going along with Wizards and Clerics. You don't need to kill vancian casting, there is an obvious place for someone who does specific things out of combat better than the Wizard and on the fly because they have a limited section of at will abilities.

The problem is that you, along with everyone else, recognize that you could never at any point give a fighter any abilities that make them valuable with a Wizard out of combat, because the concept of fighter sucks dick. But nothing stops real concepts like Blood Warrior from being able to fit next to Wizards.

Vancian casting is one of the worst game mechanics ever and should die in a fire. In the source material different spellcasters know different spells and there is a real difference between the guy who can transform himself into a dragon and the guy who can shoot fire out of his ass. In D&D every single wizard/codzilla looks like you combed through every comic book ever published by DC or Marvel, made every power you could find into a fucking spell, and gave the class all those spells, but then you decided that was too much so you said "well, maybe if they don't have all their powers at once..." and that didn't work because that is a fucking horrible idea and now you can't make a class that doesn't have access to every super power ever without breaking the game. Period. Because vancian casting is a completely unworkable mechanic.

[Sigil]

To be fair, the problem there is ever growing spell lists, not the actual mechanics of vanican casting. If the wizard seriously almost never got new spells on his list, or if instead of adding new spells to the existing list they simply got new alternate list that included some of the new spells but was mutually exclusive with other lists, it would probably be fine.

That being said, managing spell slots isn't particularly fun or exciting, and you could argue that vanican casting should be changed on those grounds.

[Voss]

Yeah, it is King Arthur/Robin Hood/LotR/the Bible, blatantly and explicitly so.
Unless you mean 4e when you say 'D&D,' of course.

Let us back up. Quite aside from dealing with high level spellcasters, the D&D fighter is so poorly designed that he in fact cannot handle those sources. Robin Hood and Aragorn can almost be represented by the ranger, maybe with some multiclassing (Aragorn probably has some levels of Paladin and Marshall), but the fighter represents nothing well, and some characters are impossible in D&D. There is basically no way to represent any but the most mundane legends of the Knights of the Round Table, certainly not the early Celtic version of King Arthur. Samson similarly does not work in D&D, since even the Tarrasque has trouble destroying buildings in these insane rules. Honestly, the rules for destroying things are probably the first thing that should be changed.

You're missing the point. For 30 odd years (up to 4e), players introduced to D&D were explicitly told that they were going to be playing Conan, Arthur, Aragorn, Jack the Giant Killer and so on. Merlin was over in the wizard class, and half the cleric spells were right out of the Old Testament, specifically Kings, with the wacky prophets intent on destroying the Jewish people in order to reform them.

So their (quite legitimate) expectations are that the source material consists those things, and not DC superheroes, Naruto, or whatever the fuck. Whether D&D does it badly is not equivalent to what expectations are, or what the source material is.

Now, if you want to build a new 'D&D' where the expectations and source material are different, that is fine, knock yourself out. But you should recognize that is what you are doing. As WotC shows with 4e and 5e, trying to change those expectations and be successful at it is a fucking nightmare, to the point that they have legitimately crashed the line. Meanwhile, even though Pathfinder is still bad, they made an effort not to change expectations, and by default more or less get to carry the D&D legacy.

[ishy]

No I'm not.

yes you are. the whole resource mechanic is useless out of combat because nobody knows what a fuckin encounter is. the idea was not to give non-casters plot affecting powers of their own, the idea was to make combat more diversified than auto-attack for these characters.

[edit] btw, this is exactly the point lago is trying to make: while the book had some interesting ideas, it didn't grasp what was fundamentally wrong with the fighter (and consorts).

Good thing I didn't say that then?
I'll try to explain differently.
ToB design goal was to create "martial spells" that are not on a daily usage chart, but still can't be used at-will.
Turning magic spells into "martial spells" means that you have to change them to a more martial flavour (fireball => whirlwind for example).
That also removed most plot affecting powers because if martials would have gained those, people wouldn't have accepted the reflavouring as much as they did.