Finding a place for Fighters

[Username17]

Fighters suck, and that's not really up for debate. What is up for debate, however, is what people actually want to do about it - how it is that people want them to be better than they are. And this goes down to the heart of the CR system. Ideally, a character should go about 50% in one-on-one against the cretaures of their own CR.

But it's not as simple as just making them the same as the creatures of their level, that's not even practical. What we are really looking at is a spread, where some characters should beat individual monsters of their level most of the time and get schooled by others - so that a party with diverse abilities has a rotating star in different battles and generally wins even though specific characters would get schooled by some of the monsters they face in a cage match.

So what we need is to decide which monsters a Fighter should beat. For ease of reference, here's a chart (Win, Lose, Draw):

W. L. D.
[ ] [ ] [ ] Dragon
[ ] [ ] [ ] Collossal Animated Object
[ ] [ ] [ ] Bebilith
[ ] [ ] [ ] Couatl
[ ] [ ] [ ] Formian Mymarch
[ ] [ ] [ ] Fire Giant
[ ] [ ] [ ] Clay Golem
[ ] [ ] [ ] Hydra
[ ] [ ] [ ] Gargantuan Spider
[ ] [ ] [ ] Guardian Naga
[ ] [ ] [ ] Rakshasa
[ ] [ ] [ ] Salamander Noble
[ ] [ ] [ ] Gray Slaad
[ ] [ ] [ ] Avolakia
[ ] [ ] [ ] Brass Golem
[ ] [ ] [ ] Bronze Serpent
[ ] [ ] [ ] Dire Elephant
[ ] [ ] [ ] Greenvise
[ ] [ ] [ ] Leech Walker
[ ] [ ] [ ] Legendary Shark
[ ] [ ] [ ] Legendary Tiger
[ ] [ ] [ ] Marraenoloth
[ ] [ ] [ ] Mooncalf
[ ] [ ] [ ] Razor Boar
[ ] [ ] [ ] Runic Guardian
[ ] [ ] [ ] Spell Weaver
[ ] [ ] [ ] Yagnoloth.
[ ] [ ] [ ] Abyssal Ghoul
[ ] [ ] [ ] Darkweaver
[ ] [ ] [ ] Kelpie
[ ] [ ] [ ] Maelephant
[ ] [ ] [ ] Shedu
[ ] [ ] [ ] Sporebat
[ ] [ ] [ ] Scarab Swarm
[ ] [ ] [ ] Rager Varragoin
[ ] [ ] [ ] 10th level Warrior
[ ] [ ] [ ] 10th level Spellcaster
[ ] [ ] [ ] 10th level Rogue

-Username17

[Username17]

Here's an example of how to fill this out:

W. L. D.
[X] [ ] [ ] Dragon
[X] [ ] [ ] Collossal Animated Object
[ ] [X] [ ] Bebilith
[ ] [X] [ ] Couatl
[ ] [X] [ ] Formian Mymarch
[X] [ ] [ ] Fire Giant
[ ] [X] [ ] Clay Golem
[X] [ ] [ ] Hydra
[X] [ ] [ ] Gargantuan Spider
[ ] [X] [ ] Guardian Naga
[X] [ ] [ ] Rakshasa
[X] [ ] [ ] Salamander Noble
[ ] [X] [ ] Gray Slaad
[ ] [X] [ ] Avolakia
[X] [ ] [ ] Brass Golem
[X] [ ] [ ] Bronze Serpent
[X] [ ] [ ] Dire Elephant
[ ] [X] [ ] Greenvise
[ ] [X] [ ] Leech Walker
[ ] [X] [ ] Legendary Shark
[X] [ ] [ ] Legendary Tiger
[ ] [X] [ ] Marraenoloth
[ ] [ ] [X] Mooncalf
[X] [ ] [ ] Razor Boar
[ ] [X] [ ] Runic Guardian
[X] [ ] [ ] Spell Weaver
[ ] [X] [ ] Yagnoloth.
[X] [ ] [ ] Abyssal Ghoul
[X] [ ] [ ] Darkweaver
[ ] [X] [ ] Kelpie
[ ] [ ] [X] Maelephant
[ ] [ ] [X] Shedu
[ ] [X] [ ] Sporebat
[ ] [X] [ ] Scarab Swarm
[X] [ ] [ ] Rager Varragoin
[ ] [ ] [X] 10th level Warrior
[X] [ ] [ ] 10th level Spellcaster
[ ] [X] [ ] 10th level Rogue

Or so. Something like that. The idea is that once we decide what a Fighter should actually beat at 10th level we can decide what they should be able to do.

What I'm looking at is a character who fights well against a spellcasting enemy or a brute, but not necessarily well against a spellcasting brute or stealther. So I'm looking at maybe giving them some energy resistance and the ability to switch between an offensive stance (which hampers enemy use of spellcasting) and a defensive stance (which hampers enemy melee attacks).

And then the Fighter would be able to neutralize a Spellweaver or a Dire Elephant, but a Marraenoloth would just switch out to whichever other attack form wasn't being compensated for and school the fighter.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

W. L. D.
[X] [ ] [] Dragon
[ ] [ ] [X] Collossal Animated Object
[ ] [ ] [X] Bebilith
[ ] [ ] [X] Couatl
[ ] [ ] [X] Formian Mymarch
[ ] [ ] [X] Fire Giant
[X] [ ] [ ] Clay Golem
[X] [ ] [ ] Hydra
[ ] [X ] [] Gargantuan Spider
[ ] [ ] [X ] Guardian Naga
[ ] [] [X] Rakshasa
[ ] [ ] [X ] Salamander Noble
[ ] [ ] [X ] Gray Slaad
[ ] [X] [ ] Avolakia
[X ] [ ] [ ] Brass Golem
[ ] [ ] [X] Bronze Serpent
[ ] [X ] [ ] Dire Elephant
[ ] [X ] [ ] Greenvise
[ ] [ ] [X ] Leech Walker (this mosnter just sucks in general)
[ ] [X] [ ] Legendary Shark
[ ] [X] [ ] Legendary Tiger
[ ] [ ] [X] Marraenoloth
[ ] [ ] [X] Mooncalf
[ ] [X] [ ] Razor Boar
[ ] [X] [ ] Runic Guardian
[ ] [X] [ ] Spell Weaver
[X] [ ] [ ] Yagnoloth.
[ ] [ ] [X ] Abyssal Ghoul
[ ] [X] [ ] Darkweaver
[ ] [X] [ ] Kelpie
[ ] [ ] [X ] Maelephant
[ ] [ ] [X ] Shedu
[ ] [ ] [X ] Sporebat
[ ] [X] [ ] Scarab Swarm
[ ] [ ] [X] Rager Varragoin
[ ] [ ] [X] 10th level Warrior
[ ] [ ] [X] 10th level Spellcaster
[ ] [ ] [X] 10th level Rogue

I answered the creatures I was familiar with I'll come back and finish it later when I get time to look at my MM2.

For the most part, I picture the fighter as Mr.Average.
The fighter's edges and those with edges over him are for the most part pretty small IMO, a fire giant may have a slight edge over him, but the edge is not nearly big enough to really make a big favorite, the battle is still more or less a coin flip.

He can hold his own agasint nearly anything unless it's got some special immunity to weapon, like a swarm for instance, or its a big dumb brute that specializes in melee. Either of those require the fighter to use either tactics or get a bit of luck. Beating a dire elephant shouldnt' be impossible, but it should still favor the elephant numerically to be about a 75% favorite.

What the fighter does have a strong edge against is creatures that are designed to beat everyone else, like golems who do well against casters and rogues (or should anyway).

As for fighting the other classes, the fighter/wizard battle should be about 60% fighter victory assuming the wizard has an average spell list. If the spell list is specifically geared agaisnt fighters, with lots of enchantment/illusion, then the percentage should favor the wizard 75% if the spell list is direct damage or other fighter friendly combat spells the swing should be 75% in favor of the fighter.

Generally though, the fighter should be a man of small edges as opposed to dominating leads. The fighter should be the guy who is suited for almost any threat.

[Username17]

One thing I noticed about game balance is that a Spellcaster can't really do shit to a Rakshasa. So if the Fighter isn't set up to kill them with great facility, then the Rogue has to be, as an iconic party is walking in with two guys with nothing much to do this fight.

If neither the Rogue nor the Fighter are "very effective" against the Rakshasa, then the Rakshasa needs to be higher CR than it currently is. And since the Rakshasa basically just fights like a Wizard, this means that the basic PC classes are going to have to have some kind of RPS relationship - not some lovely set-up where everyone draws against each other.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1090800776[/unixtime]]One thing I noticed about game balance is that a Spellcaster can't really do shit to a Rakshasa. So if the Fighter isn't set up to kill them with great facility, then the Rogue has to be, as an iconic party is walking in with two guys with nothing much to do this fight.

Well I'd say the rogue should probably be the good rakshasa killer. He's got ways of beating invisibility, and some other spells. Rogues in general should be good wizard killers IMO.

As for wizards, generally I think wizards should probably lose on average to most creatures in straight up battle. The reason being that they don't really have to engage in straight up battles if they don't want to. A wizard who is prepared should be able to beat most things, but if he's not well prepared then generally he should be about a 6 to 4 underdog.

If neither the Rogue nor the Fighter are "very effective" against the Rakshasa, then the Rakshasa needs to be higher CR than it currently is. And since the Rakshasa basically just fights like a Wizard, this means that the basic PC classes are going to have to have some kind of RPS relationship - not some lovely set-up where everyone draws against each other.

Well, when I say draw, I really mean less than a 10% edge on either side. In other words, one side may be slightly favored, but for the most part it's still a coin flip we're talking about here, because conceivably stuff like feat/spell selection and other internal class customization can shift the swing from one side to another, because the favorite is small. And I don't think it's impossible to achieve that, because the core classes don't have the kinds of resistances monsters do. The main reason rakshasa beat wizards is because they've got absurdly high SR, PC classes generally won't get that. So it's alot easier to create coin flip balance among PC classes.

The fighter especially is very customizeable, it's why in general I'd say most of his battles should be considered draws, because depending on where he puts his feats he may be better or worse against certain things. Without breaking the fighting styles down, we can't go much further. An archer for instance may be better at killing wizards, while a two handed fighter/ power attacker should probably be better dealing with a giant. But in general, I think the fighter should be the guy that comes to the table prepared for almost anything. He was this way in 2nd edition anyway. He had good saves, he did good damage, and he had good hp. Sure, some stuff could hose him, but for the most part you couldn't go wrong with a fighter.

[User3]

First, you have the worse examples of monsters in your list.

Let’s take our friend the Spellweaver, who in a one-on-one fight can shoot six Magic Missile spells at four a piece, for a grand total of 24d4+24 damage to one target, no save, for an average of 72 damage a round to one guy. Add one Sorcerer level, and he’s got an extra missile on each spell, for a total of 30d4+30, for 90 damage. Or three Scorching ray spells for a grand total of 24d6, no save, assuming he hits on all rays, which is enough to kill the average fighter level 10 fighter. Or six Charm Person spells, which turns around two party members a turn.

Runic Guardian. He’s the “and that’s how I got a free Limited Wish once a day” guy. Terrible.

Most of the rest are boss monsters and good against anything but an entire party. Rakshasa are boss monsters, as are most outsiders or dragons. They have good BAB and saves, resistances, and free spellcasting for no reason, essentially being multiclass fighter/spellcasters.

Then you’ve got the stupid bashers like the animated objects, golems, and the legendary Xs which get schooled by PCs of drastically lower levels if they have even a few rounds of prep.

Worse list ever.

[Username17]

Worst list ever.

It's the actual CR 10 monster list, like it or stuff it.

-Username17

[User3]

The CR 10 list includes monsters with templates, classes, more HD, and most importantly circumstance bonuses or penalties. CR as a flat stat is just a baseline by which you add or subtract numbers to determine the difficulty of an encounter. A vampire is a CR 0 encounter if he's in his coffin in open space during the day, and you just set his coffin on fire.

Judging a non-party PC vs a single monster's flat CR is an exercise in futility.

Plain and simple.

[Username17]

The CR 10 list includes monsters with templates, classes, more HD,

Sort of. Creature Advancement doesn't really work very well. Doubling the Hit Dice of a Black Slaad was worth way more than +2 CR in 3e, and adding 4 hit dice to a Gargantuan Centipede is basically negligible and worth way less than +2 CR in 3.5.

So long as the creature advancement system is basically "just fvcking wing it" I'm not even going to pretend to try to make intelligent decisions based on the CRs of advanced monsters that we can't even agree upon.

and most importantly circumstance bonuses or penalties.

Circumstances which are interpretted as they differ from the norm. The Norm being defined as the creatures in the monster books which are defined as CR 10 coming for your face.

Judging a non-party PC vs a single monster's flat CR is an exercise in futility.

No it isn't. Actually talking about CR at all before you've done that is the exercise in futility. Until a 10th level Fighter or Wizard, on their own, is walking away from half the fights with the standard monsters of CR 10, then you can't even have a coherent discussion about how circumstances or advancement, or whatever, is modifying the effectve CR of an actual in-game event.

-Username17

[User3]

I can’t even look at two level 10 fighters or wizards straight out of the box and tell you who is going to win half the time.

One fighter may be a charger with a griffon cohort and the other may be a reach fighter with spinning halberd and elusive target and some anti-charge feats and another might be an archer and depending on the terrain any one of them might win.

Wizards are even worse. The Wiz with the save or die spells (like Charm Monster or Baleful Polymorph) might slip one past the defenses of a burner mage who sends quickened Magic missiles with Scorching Rays who might get schooled by an illusionist who causes the burner to blow all his good spells on smoke and shadows and the terrain wWizzy with walls spells and Solid Fog might murder them all.

And that’s not even talking about magic equipment, or the strength a good player can bring to battle.

The variance between even two equal level characters, like the variance between monsters, is so big that you are forced to eyeball CR every time.

CR works only as a general “weight class” of a monster. If you want it to be exact you are going to have to go to your version of DnD where everyone has the same equipment, same damage potential, same range of effects, and same skills. At that point we might as well just play a nice game of chess, because it looks nothing like the beautifully organic mess that is DnD.

[Username17]

Look, if you don't want to help, just shut the fvck up. Seriously. In order to even have "weight classes" or "power levels", or any of the other bullshit hand waving concepts you are talking about, you need to have a standard of some kind. It doesn't matter what the hell that standard is, but you need to have one.

If your standard is "the characters" - that's fine. You take the power level of the characters, and you tweak the monsters to match that. If your standard is "the monsters" - that's fine too. You just tweak the characters until they match the monsters and you are good to go.

The problem here is that the characters aren't matched against each other. The Druid and the Cleric are better than you. The Fighter can't even tie his shoes without help from a Divine Spellcaster at 18th level. And so on.

So what we are doing is looking at the monsters. The rea, honest to goodness, actual creatures in the monster books and extrapolating what player characters should be capable of based on what it takes to defeat the monsters that the CR system tells us the players should be able to defeat.

Got it?

So all your trivial rants about how different people can get lucky, or advanced monsters aren't very balanced, or whatever is a smokescreen to cover up for the fact that you seem to have absolutely nothing whatever of relevence to contribute to this discussion. Seriously, your every objection to this process is a joke, because it's not even close to relevent.

The relevent data is, and only is:

* There are some CR 10 monsters.
* Player Characters at level 10 are supposed to go about 50% solo against CR 10 monsters.

That's it. Nothing else even matters for this discussion, because it's a discussion of what characters should be capable of based on those two facts alone. So if you want to rant about how you can beat a vampire at 1st level if your DM has house ruled you a method by which the vampire can be killed without a high-level Sun Domain Greater Turning Check (the only thing in the Core Rules which actually kills vampires past all their overlapping immunities and poor editting), and then put your 1st level character in such a position as they can take advantage of whatever house rule your DM came up with - sure. Whatever, I honestly don't care.

This is not about how you can hand wave shit into making a good (or bad) story. It's not about how if you follow the creature advancement rules baby jesus cries (such as when an Ogre 9th level Cleric is supposed to be higher CR than an Ettin 9th level Cleric in the 3.5 MM). It's not about how the power level of monsters vs. the as written PC classes is a hopeless mismatch. It's not about how the PC classes as written aren't balanced. It's not about how you can pull weird crap to take on monsters high above your level in actual play.

It's not about any of that crap. Those might be fascinating discussions, and some of them are doubtless true. But it's not important for the purpose of this discussion.

At all.

The only thing you have to wrap your fuzzy little mind around for the purpose of this thread is that the Monster Books have defined some CR 10 out-of-the-box creatures and the CR system tells us that PCs should be able to go 50/50 in solo against these creatures. Those are literally the only important pieces of data in the entire universe for the purpose of this discussion, because it's an outside-the-box discussion of what characters should be capable of at 10th level based on those two pieces of data alone.

So seriously, if you don't have anything useful to add, if you don't think that CR is salvageable, if you want to abandon the whole idea of rules altogether and just play Munchausen, good for you. But keep that kind of crap out of this thread. Stop hijacking the thread with inane bullshit. Take your irrelevent objections elsewhere so that people who are actually examining what the Monsters show that characters should be capable of won't have to deal with your shitty ideas.

-Username17

[canamrock]

Frank, for this comparison, should we consider magical equipment in addition to the character's class abilties, or not?

[Username17]

1090882722[/unixtime]]Frank, for this comparison, should we consider magical equipment in addition to the character's class abilties, or not?

Think outside the box. The Fighter, which is the basis of this discussion (since their the ones who fail the CR litmus test the worst), is generally extremely equipment dependent.

They don't have to be. You could make them have special combat bonuses that were really big and basically eliminate the enhancement bonus from the game altogether. It's not important.

Or rather, it is important, but the idea is to figure out what you want the Fighter with whatever they are actually going to have to be able to beat, and how. Once you figure out what the Fighter is going to need in terms of abilities and bonuses to accomplish what you want them to, you can start deciding how much, if anything, should be coming from magical items.

We know that the magic item system needs a huge overhaul, so you probably shouldn't even worry yourself about how many of the bonuses and abilities "should" be coming from magic swords for quite a while.

-Username17

[fbmf]

Please keep it civil.

[/The Great Fence Builder Speaks]

Game On,
fbmf

[canamrock]

1090883215[/unixtime]]We know that the magic item system needs a huge overhaul, so you probably shouldn't even worry yourself about how many of the bonuses and abilities "should" be coming from magic swords for quite a while.

Alright. That's how I was figuring to do it, but I just wanted to be sure we were on the same wavelength for that.

[User3]

I'm not talking about fringe cases. This is standard DnD stuff.

Until you standardize all abilities to one kind of character, one scale of damage, one way of relating to skills, and one method of creating equally useful effects, then trying to build little cage matches in your head where you can test out every single battle combo to find the one combo thats totally efficent and optimum is useless, because this is not a tactics game using any of the RAW.

Its a storytelling game that actually is quite Munchhausen. It could more balanced, and thats where we can have discussion.

On multiple occasions and on multiple (even current) threads you advocate turning d20 into a Shadowrun or Champions-style game. From what I've seen of both games, they are just what you are looking for.

From what I've seen, you're the one hijacking a DnD board in favor of discussions about some other game.

-------------------
A fighter holding his non-focused/non-specialized/non-magic weapon is useless in 3e, and that's been a core problem with the DnD system from the old days.

That being said, fighters should be benchmarked vs other bashers of their level, meaning that for a 10th level fighter to win vs a Fire giant he needs to spend his feats on things other than Weapon focus and Specialization and the upgrades for those feats, spend his equipment on something more tactically useful than a +x weapon and armor, and every monster in the MM needs its AC to drop like 5-6 or more points.

Once the fighter has 11 actual abilities to play with, and he's not spending 90% of his equipment trying to stay with the AC curve, he'll become a far more useful and interesting character-type. He'll be able to afford resistance equipment, useful stuff like Cloaks of the Montebank or Figurines of Wonderous Power, and he'll be a better adventurer more able to fit into a variety of stories.

[RandomCasualty]

1090878696[/unixtime]]I can’t even look at two level 10 fighters or wizards straight out of the box and tell you who is going to win half the time.

The idea is to create a paradigm of some kind so you can balance the class, and that's a damn good idea to do so. Half the reason the fighter is in so much trouble is because nobody really knows what we want him to beat, and what we want him to be weak against. We can say right now what it is he is weak against and what he can or cannot beat, but that doesn't really help us balance him because we have no idea where we want him to go. It's why every fighter rewrite tends to be a directionless "more power" approach that resembles a chicken running around with its head cut off. Until we know exactly what we want the fighter to do, all we are going to know is that he sucks now, and he needs to be better. That really isn't all that helpful from a design point of view.

This isn't a question about who would win in the current rules system, it's about who we want to win ideally. Obviously there's going to be some kind of deviation based on feat and spell choices, but that doesn't prevent you from getting a basic class paradigm. If someone tells you his wizard just beat 4 fighters of his CR singlehandedly, you must know if this is supposed to happen or not. Without a paradigm you simply cannot do that.

Once the fighter has 11 actual abilities to play with, and he's not spending 90% of his equipment trying to stay with the AC curve, he'll become a far more useful and interesting character-type. He'll be able to afford resistance equipment, useful stuff like Cloaks of the Montebank or Figurines of Wonderous Power, and he'll be a better adventurer more able to fit into a variety of stories.

This, I pretty highly disagree with, because essentially this is the desire to turn a fighter into a wizard. He's doing a bunch of magical stuff that wizards typically do, though instead of paying the relatively cheap cost of scribing a spell, he's paying top dollar for magical goods that emulate a wizard. This is what the current paradigm is based on, magic required to beat magic and swords being good for shit. This is exactly the kind of thing we want to avoid.

If the point of a fighter is to buy items and try to emulate a wizard, then he might as well just have been a cleric. That way he gets the good hit points, good AC and casting ability, and he can still buy expensive magical items.

The game simply cannot be based around everyone becoming more wizard-like at higher levels, because the wizard is always going to be better at that shit. That's what he does. I'm sick and tired of fighters requiring helms of teleportation and all that shit. If you want to teleport take a wizard or a cleric with travel domain. Sure, an occasional fighter may have an item that does that, but it should not be some kind of requirement.

You should not need wizard abilities to compete. It's that kind of thinking that digs the fighter's grave.

[User3]

The game simply cannot be based around everyone becoming more wizard-like at higher levels, because the wizard is always going to be better at that shit.

Thats just not true. A wizard can have a Griffon Figurine of Wonderous Power and throw it into combat once in a while (when the standard action to do so is worth more than casting a spell), but its the fighter with his load of feats that can use that griffin to fight in battle. The Mounted feats and riding feats work really well for the fighter, and do nothing for a wizard. a lot of equipment is great in the hands of of a fighter and blows in the hands of the wizard with his weakass BAB and lack of feats.

A wizard also doesn't get much from resistances. Ideally, he's not being hit in combat that often so having Death Ward armor blows goats for him, but it rocks for the fighter killing lifedraining undead.

With the exception of the rather lame "legendary" and dire animals and vermin, bashers above about level 10 tend to have a couple of resistances, and a few synergising magical abilities. Even Giants, the most straightforward of the bashers, past level 10 have one full resistance and a "magical" ability to throw rocks for great range and decent damage, as well as having good AC's and an assload of Strength that make them great Jumpers and Climbers. Storm giants even have a few spells.

If a sample 10th level fighter had equipment that looked like this, I'd be happier:

*Sword that did lightning damage instead of normal damage.
*Dagger that ignored harness.
*Armor/shield with common elemental/undead resistances
*Magical Mount/Movement form like a paladin horse(which should be equipment) or wings of flying or jumping boots
*2-3 "odd things" like Elemental rings or Bands of Bilarro

As you can see, there's not a +X item in that list.

This is a high fantasy game, and unless you have high fantasy stuff to compete and change the tactical landscape, you lose. Stacks of pluses are fine for the classic DnD player who sorts through 3000+ pages of material looking for every feat, spell, and piece of equipement to boost his main stats (BAB, Saves, Str, Dex, Con), but he's robbing other players of a decent play experience if his character needs to be so totally focused on his attack numbers just to be viable. Wizards are allowed to be damage dealers or problem solvers, and fighters need the same options.

[Username17]

Thats just not true.

Yes it is. If the Fighter is supposed to be "balanced" by whining to the Wizard until the Wizard gets off his ass and makes the Fighter some cool stuff such that the Fighter can start doing some Wizard-like tricks, then the Fighter may as well not even show up.

Hand waving about how Fighters can just get with the program and have magic items which are made by wizards which replicate wizard class features until they are somehow balanced is a kick in the god damned crotch.

You can't ever balance Fighters that way, you've just forced them into the Nodwick role - where their sole contribution to the party is carrying all the Wizard's stuff.

Fvck that. Seriously.

Stacks of pluses are fine for the classic DnD player who sorts through 3000+ pages of material looking for every feat, spell, and piece of equipement to boost his main stats (BAB, Saves, Str, Dex, Con), but he's robbing other players of a decent play experience if his character needs to be so totally focused on his attack numbers just to be viable.

Now, while you keep trying to derail this thread, you seem to maybe be starting to get this. The point is not to say "The Fighter needs bigger bonuses", or "the Fighter needs more abilities" - either or both of those may be true, but it's discussions like that which always end in nothing productive at all.

The point is that until you can look at the challenges awaiting a 10th level Fighter and decide which you think they should be overcoming and how - you can't even make that decision.

Some people may want the Fighter to totally school the Giant Spider but lose hard to a Sporebat - in which case they just need melee combat bonuses so huge that they can beat the Giant Spider. Others may want a Fighter who is so full of tricks that he bests the Avolakia, but still gets his butt handed to him by the Spider because his bonuses are therefore relatively small.

But until you actually articulate that everyone's just talking past each other.

So shut the hell up and post what monsters you think they should beat. Everything else you are doing is wasting our damned time.

-Username17

[User3]

Frank,
Either the red rage is blinding you or you’ve forgotten how to read.

I’m pretty sure that I expressed my preference that:
A. Fighters should be able to school bashers like giants.
B. They should do it with good tricks, like feats or non-plus equipment.

As for “but the wizards makes all my stuff!!!” crybaby crap, I can say that in the current version of d20, every encounter has a treasure value and the fighter can buy magic equipment from reasonably sized towns, so he in fact is not waiting for anything other than the nearest town to get new stuff.

Sure, for some “survival” campaigns where you never see a town and the only magic items in the game are made by the party (which deviates heavily from the standard DnD campaign) some other mechanic is needed. Like most houserules, once started, you need more houserules to compensate for your old houserules and keep your game to any standard of balance.


So, to summarize some of the completely non-derailing comments so far:

Stealth monsters for rogues, bashers for fighters, spellcasters for casters, and some monsters should be “party monsters” that need a mix of party abilities to beat.

I think its more fun to win fights with cool abilities than with massive pluses. That’s why we don’t give the gods stats, because that just encourages players to read every damned book in an attempt to find a ginormous combo of stats that makes your play balance drop through the floor when they actually kill said god, and every other damned thing with their monstrous wang. See the Cleric Archer as a reference.

[User3]

Sorry, red rage in my eye. Last post was mine.

[Username17]

The basic "just buy whatever magic swag you need" needs huge piles of house rules to keep people from breaking the game by stealing, mining, or farming, and I have yet to see anyone actually come up with such a system by which an Elven party can't simply decide to farm for a hundred and fifty years and buy that new toy they want.

So no, I totally reject your hypothesis that this can somehow be solved or meaningfully influenced in a positive manner by putting different stock into Ye Olde Magic Shoppe.

But it's not even relavent. Don't tell me what equipment you think the Fighter should have, because I honestly don't give a damn. Tell me which creatures on the actual list you think the Fighter should beat and then go ahead and present a model for a set of total bonuses and abilities which you think should make said Fighter win those combats and not the other ones.

As is, you've presented the opinion that Fighters should beat "pure bruisers" (ie.: the creatures who are just very large collections of bonuseS), but not beat creatures with special abilties. And then you said that the Fighter shouldn't be just a pile of bonuses.

Which seems inherently contradictory. If the only thing they are beating is large piles of bonuses, and they lose to anyone trickier than that, doesn't that mean that your model for the Fighter is nothing but some extremely large bonuses? (that just happen to be bigger than the Giants they are beating)

The things you are describing by your demands for what the Fighter should be able to do and your demands for how the Fighter should be doing it do not mesh. At all.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

Pure bashers must beat fighters. Because the other classes can already trick them and beat them by trickery, and that's how you beat a pure dumb basher like a collossal spider. So all the basher can beat is a fighter in this setup and that's what he has to do. There's a reason they have a mountain of bonuses, because that's all they've got.

Now, you've got some other dumb creatures, like golems who fill a totally different monster role. They're designed to be a counter to rogues and casters, so the fighter must beat them, because he's the only one left.

It's a process of elimination. Every class has a chart like the one Frank set up, and every monster has a chart which lists the basic PC archetypes in the same fashion. Ideally everything works out to near 50/50 win:loss or something close enough to it to satisfy us.

But tilting the scales heavily on one side forces us to tilt back on the other. A creature that gets slaughtered by a caster should probably be able to slaughter someone else, or at least severely beat down fighters and rogues.

Now, another problem is that we need to differentiate the strengths and weaknesses of divine casters versus arcane because we are talking about a supposedly different paradigm for each (but that's probably the topic of another thread).

I think its more fun to win fights with cool abilities than with massive pluses. That’s why we don’t give the gods stats, because that just encourages players to read every damned book in an attempt to find a ginormous combo of stats that makes your play balance drop through the floor when they actually kill said god, and every other damned thing with their monstrous wang. See the Cleric Archer as a reference.

Bonuses are the easiest to balance. You simply create X number of feats that give the kinds of bonuses you want, then you just don't make or allow any more.

Anyway, we need more people actually filling out the chart.

[Sma]

[ ] [ ] [ ] Dragon -
[ ] [L] [ ] Collossal Animated Object
[ ] [L] [ ] Bebilith - eats armor
[W] [ ] [ ] Couatl
[ ] [ ] [D] Formian Mymarch
[ ] [L] [ ] Fire Giant
[ ] [ ] [D] Clay Golem
[ ] [L] [ ] Hydra
[ ] [L] [ ] Gargantuan Spider
[W] [ ] [ ] Guardian Naga
[W] [ ] [ ] Rakshasa
[ ] [ ] [D] Salamander Noble
[W] [ ] [ ] Gray Slaad - caster with good melee capabilites due to inflated HD
[W] [ ] [ ] Avolakia - once the diguise is gone pretty weak, if in disguise should win against fighter though, even if by siccing the towns guard on him
[ ] [ ] [D] Brass Golem
[ ] [ ] [D] Bronze Serpent
[ ] [L] [ ] Dire Elephant
[ ] [ ] [ ] Greenvise - this is more of a trap than a monster due to near non-existent speed. So by all rights the fighter either should loose if he springs it, or totally own it if someone mentions it to him beforehand.
[ ] [L] [ ] Leech Walker
[ ] [L] [ ] Legendary Shark
[ ] [L] [ ] Legendary Tiger
[W] [ ] [ ] Marraenoloth
[ ] [ ] [ ] Mooncalf
[ ] [L] [ ] Razor Boar
[W] [ ] [ ] Runic Guardian
[W] [ ] [ ] Spell Weaver
[ ] [ ] [D] Yagnoloth - why they use the weak hand as a primary is anyones guess
[ ] [L] [ ] Abyssal Ghoul
[ ] [L] [ ] Darkweaver
[ ] [ ] [D] Kelpie
[ ] [ ] [W] Maelephant
[ ] [ ] [D] Shedu
[ ] [ ] [W] Sporebat
[ ] [L] [ ] Scarab Swarm
[W] [ ] [ ] Rager Varragoin
[ ] [ ] [D] 10th level Warrior
[W] [ ] [ ] 10th level Spellcaster
[ ] [L] [ ] 10th level Rogue

Fighter beats Spellcaster
Spellcaster beats Rogue
Rogue beats Fighter

would be my preferred setup. So giving the fighter a bunch of resistances and good saves seems at first sight like a good idea to me. This could make him rather resistant to rogues though, so we´ll have to make sure they only apply against magic. I do have a difficult time fitting those CR 10 monsters into the three basic niches, as some of these have potent magic mixed with pretty good bruiser abilities.

Sma

[User3]

Hero stories that I like always have the fighters pulling some crazy crap against bigger and harder to damage foes. Rather than trading blows unitl one guy drops, they trade blows until one guy pulls some crazy crap.

After watching Conan the Destroyer this weekend, I totally realized just how skilled the classis bronzed barbarian was; Vs the boss monster, he fought with his sword and stuff and got his butt kicked, but it wasn't until he grappled the monster that he won the day.

Now what DnD Fighter ever wins a batle by dropping his sword and graplling? None, that is, since the rules don't make that a nearly viable option until you burn like 3 feats.

After watching Soldier this weekend (was sick and stayed in front of the TV this weekend), I noticed that the fighter hero killed the genetically superior enemy(faster, stronger, tougher, better aim) by pulling crap like Intimidate checks and unconvential combat techniques.

The disney Sinbad was also 100% crazt tricks and techniques. the only staight "lets trade blows" NPC fighter in the movie got swallowed by a giant squid.

Maybe its just Hollywood, but I think that monsters have big bonuses(to make them simple to run) and fighters have good tricks like maneuvers and stuff to cancel out the numerically superior foe.

Take a feat like Elusive Target(Foe? I dunno. the CW feat). It cancels Power Attack. PA is a huge feat and the main power of high strength monsters like giants. ET also allows an fighter to dodge an attack a turn and cause it to hit a flanking enemy, and that's totally cool for a guy fighting a couple of T-Rexes with single huge attacks.

Monsters need to be simple stat blocks. Make fighters the crazy tricks guys who out-tactics bruisers, along with the wizards who outspell monsters who have fixed spell lists with unlimited castings and rogues who try to outsneak monsters with cammo skin or natural invis.