A variant fighter?

[Ranger5]

I just wanted to post what my group does for the fighter class. Long ago, just after 3ed first came out, we sat down as a group and went over the classes - things we liked and didn't like. At the top of the list of things we didn't like was the ranger of course, as a good number of people felt as well. The ranger was followed closely by the sorcerer (what no CHA based skills?) and the paladin (how many Remove Diseases do you really need anyway?).

So several kinds of variants were used in our group, especially for the ranger. But with the release of 3.5, the need for a variant ranger went away as we all felt that it became a lot cooler and much more playable. And this goes for the paladin as well. (In fact I am playing one in our current game now.) As for the sorcerer, we still use Monte Cook's variant from The Book of Eldritch Might 2.

But what does this have to do with the fighter you may ask? Well, as a group, we felt that the fighter seemed to get a little short changed. We asked ourselves, would any want to play a fighter from 1st to 20th level as it stands in either 3.0 or 3.5? Most of us thought about it and said no, we would obviously want to take a prestige class or even multiclass because we all felt that at the higher levels, the fighter seems to fall behind the other core classes.

Now don't get me wrong, we understand that the fighter has the best BAB, but so does the barbarian, ranger, and paladin. The fighter does have a great hit die, but the paladin has the same and the barbarian has a better one.

And as for saves and skills - well saves are on par with the other martial characters, though the ranger is better. And skills - errrr, well, what skills.

So finally we looked at what the fighter does get and that of course is the list of bonus feats. And as impressive as it is to get a bonus feat every other level, this only lets the fighter shine at the lower levels. Once he gets past 5th or 6th, it really starts to show that there is something missing. And around 12th+, well it becomes even more obvious when just compared to the monk or the cleric or even the barbarian.

So in response to this, we came up with a variant fighter that is extremely simple to incorporate into any campaign, new or existing. Since the change, we have had several players play straight up fighters and have not felt it has overpowered them nor unbalanced the game at all.

What did we do you ask? We gave the fighter a bonus feat at every level. They may choose from the bonus feat list at every level and if played to 20th level, a human fighter ends up with 28 feats. This may seem a lot, but look at a 20th level wizard, or monk, or cleric, or rogue for that matter. To use it balances out the fighter and makes it a class we want to play to 20th level.

Anyway, sorry for going on so long. I just thought I would throw this out there and see what everyone else though about this.

 

[Prothall]

Doesn't this make the fighter frightneningly powerful at some low-ish levels? What level characters have you been playing, and about how high or low powered is your game? I'm thinking it's not on the same scale I'm on, but I see your argument about high level fighters.

 

[DrSpunj]

I just thought I would throw this out there and see what everyone else though about this.

Well, I'm glad you did.

I've been tinkering over the last few weeks with an Excel spreadsheet that takes all the Core base classes as well as those from Monte's Arcana Unearthed and, by assigning point values to various class abilities, compares the classes to each other.

I've broken down the abilities into: HD, BAB, Defense Bonus (I'm adding one, though not quite the UA version), Fort, Refl, Will, Skill Pts, Weapon Profs, Armor/Shield Profs, Special Class Abilities, Magic (Half or Full, per AU charts) and Restrictions (to represent an Oathsworn's oath, a Paladin's code, etc.; these actually give a few extra points, as you might imagine). All the class abilities are essentially converted into feats, either General (like a Druid's Nature Sense) or Combat (like Weapon Specialization). The sheet looks at every class over all 20 levels.

Because coming up with the value of a poor BAB vs a good BAB (or any other class ability) is extremely arbitrary, I've built it so if I change the values at the top of the page, then all the classes recalculate their totals according to the new values. It also calculates averages for each class over 20 levels, all classes at 1st level, and all classes over all 20 levels.

Even starting with my initial values (based upon what you can get from a 3.5 Core feat, like Weapon Focus vs Iron Will vs Dodge, etc.) I was pleasantly surprised at how much things mirrored my own perceptions of the relative balance between classes. If you're interested in seeing it let me know and I'll either post it or email you a copy.

Anyway, to get back to your point, Ranger5, I also gave the Fighter a bonus Combat feat at each level, and it brought the Fighter up closer to the average of most other base classes. I'm anxious to try this with my new campaign starting midsummer, and am glad to hear of your own experiences in actual play.

Anyone else done this? What kind of results did people see?

Thanks.

DrSpunj

 

[Ranger5]

Well Prothall it actually works and yes, I would agree that the fighter does have a little bit of extra power in the first few levels but it definitely does even out with evryone else by about 7th or 8th level. I actually played a fighter to 14th level before the campaign ended and I was using a greatsword as my main weapon. And I can honetsly tell you, the halfling cleric of Avoreen using a Sunblade and casting Righteous Might, Divine Power, Montrous Regeneration, and Favor of Avoreen (really Illmater in the Magic of Faerun) did a hell of a lot more damage than I did. Of course it took him a couple of rounds to kick off all those spells while I was attacking so I would say in the end, it evened out.

And DrSpunj I would love to see your spreadsheet. What you did is pretty much what we did as a group but probably not as detailed. But in the end (meaning around 20th level) we found the fighter lacking compared to the other core classes. And it has always been an assumption of our group that any core class should be able to be played to 20th level and be balanced with other multi- or prestiged class characters of the same level. There should always be a give and take when it comes to multiclassing and taking a prestige class.

And as I said above, I am playing a paladin in the current game. He is currently 5th level and my plan is to either take him all the way to 20th or prestige into Divine Champion. The deciding factor will be do I want to give up spell power and smite evil for feats and increased save bonuses. I am not sure yet as I still have 2 more levels before I can even take Divine Champion.

 

[Ranger5]

Duplicate post. Sorry.

 

[Prothall]

That makes good sense. Really, I'd seriously consider using this if my players who are inclined to play fighters weren't already evil munchkins. Thanks for posting! Also, I'd like to see that spreadsheet, though it'd be nice if you could get it as an image instead of an .xls file...

 

[CRGreathouse]

I really think that this is a bad idea. First, fighters are quite powerful up to ~10th level in my experience. Second, the major problem I've found with high-level fighters is not that they have too few feats, but tht they have few feats to choose from. Adding more feats vastly increases their power in the level 5-9 range and doesn't help the high-level dearth of good feats to take -- in fact, it hurts it.

My solution was to write (or find in various D&D/d20 books) a whole lot of feats that were good for fighters at high levels.

As far as point-based systems for checking balance... with no offense intended, I'll say that I've never seen them work. The class construction engine was easy to fool into over- or underrating classes, and even the 2E default class construction rules (which nominally made new classes weaker; you couldn't recreate existing classes with them) were even easier to use to make overpowered classes.

I'll believe their effect when I see them work.

 

[Ranger5]

I really think that this is a bad idea. First, fighters are quite powerful up to ~10th level in my experience. Second, the major problem I've found with high-level fighters is not that they have too few feats, but tht they have few feats to choose from. Adding more feats vastly increases their power in the level 5-9 range and doesn't help the high-level dearth of good feats to take -- in fact, it hurts it.

My solution was to write (or find in various D&D/d20 books) a whole lot of feats that were good for fighters at high levels.

I guess it really all depends on the players, the DM, and the campaign. I would say that as a group we like to keep things balanced and usually do not institute house rules willy-nilly. First they are discussed between the group and then if everyone agrees they are instituted on a trial basis for as many sessions as seems comfortable. And we all know that if it doesn't work, we take them out. No big deal.

As a perfect example, I had been running a game and decided to institute the idea of Karma Points (basically Action Points from UA - hey maybe Andy stole my idea ). Anyway, the intent was to not get PCs killed by bad die rolls. What ended up happening was that players would store them up and then when it got to a big battle they would then use them all at once. This ended up imbalancing the encounter by a lot. Now I could have come up with even more rules in their use but that would have just ended up being more complicated. So we dropped them. Everyone didn't mind either as they knew what they were doing. (People always talk about evil DMs but man, players can be just as bad ).

Anyway, for us, the bonus feat per level for the fighter works great. The only time it is a disadvantage is when we come up against minotaur fighters with greataxes.

 

[Kemrain]

A feat every level? I'd be more likley to take 20 levels in Fighter if they got more skill points. Even with a feat every level, I'd never take more than 4 levels in the class. I am a multiclass-phile, but still, I don't see how this would encourage anyone to do anything other than use Fighter as a Combat-Prowess-Injection, rather than a career path. As a character-building tool, Fighter is a great class. As a career path, it drops the ball, loses it, and then proceeds to lie about ever having seen a ball. I don't think this will address the issue, as by the time you have most of the feats you want for your character, you're at Prestige Class level anyway, even without doubled up feats.

[Rereading that, it sounds kinda hostile, but I'm not sure how to remedy that. It's not suppoded to be!]

This all comes down to how you view the classes. If you think of them as the archtype, or profession your character is a part of, then being able to take 20 levels of it is important. However, if you look at them as nothing more than tools to build the PC you want, then never taking more than 4 levels of Fighter is AOK. I don't think the problem needs to be fixed, to be honest (Though I would give Fighters 4 Skill Points a Level, regardless.) If it works for you, fantastic! It doesn't work for me, and that's okay, too. I just wanted to show another way of looking at the situation.

- Kemrain the Rog 4, Rgr 2, Ftr 1, Mag 1.

 

[Jens]

I've been tinkering over the last few weeks with an Excel spreadsheet that takes all the Core base classes as well as those from Monte's Arcana Unearthed and, by assigning point values to various class abilities, compares the classes to each other.

I attempted something similar for 3e, but the results weren't great. To reduce the number of values to be assigned arbitrarily I assigned values by regression based on the assumption that the classes were balanced with each other. As it turned out, this was not enough to make the classes come out even - they simply have different power curves. Also, some character aspects synergise; HPs, BAB, armor, combat feats, and weapon selection for example.

Anyway, to get back to your point, Ranger5, I also gave the Fighter a bonus Combat feat at each level, and it brought the Fighter up closer to the average of most other base classes. I'm anxious to try this with my new campaign starting midsummer, and am glad to hear of your own experiences in actual play.

If giving a feat every level is too much at the early levels, how about:
- bonus feats at levels not divisible by 3: 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, ... (that way there is no difference until 5th and not much until 8th)
- only give bonus feats at every level from 10th

Having said that, I do think CRGreathouse has a point: Fighters don't need more feats as much as they need some kind of scaling. With that in mind, it micht be an idea to make more fighter-only feats, which may even be a little better than other feats like WS is. I can imagine various style specializations (1H, 2H, 2W, S+B, Ranged, Armor, Shield, etc.), but there's probably plenty of other things that could be made fighter-only.