What's the equivalent of Practiced Spellcaster for fighters?

[Felon]

Consider a Ftr 4/ Wiz 6. She attacks at BAB +7, and her Fireballs do 6d6 damage. Now add in the Practiced Spellcaster feat and her Fireballs do 10d6 damage. But she still attacks at BAB +7. A bit unfair, isn't it?

You're oversimplifying, for reasons that have been amply supplied. PS is just a patch for something a spellcaster should probably get anyway in some fashion.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I entirely disagree that there is a balance problem with a Ftr4/Wiz6 casting 10d6 Fireballs, even with no feat spent on PS.

As you scale up in levels, those 1st-3rd level spells tend to become relatively weaker even if the casting level is allowed to scale up for "free". 6d6 damage is much more impressive at 6th level than 10d6 is at 10th level, especially once you factor in the frequency of resistances/defenses.

I think brehobit's proposed feat looks reasonable. I dislike that it further rewards multiclassing -- already very powerful IMO. However that is probably more the fault of the upper levels of the fighterish classes being insufficiently attractive rather a problem with this proposed feat.

 

[dirkformica]

A slight do-over of szilard's suggestion.
Practiced Warrior [General]

Prerequisites
Proficiency with martial weapons, weapon focus, at least 4 levels in a full-BAB class,

Benefit
Your base attack bonus increases by one, but cannot exceed your hit dice.

Special
You can gain this feat multiple times. Its effects stack.

A fighter may select Practiced Warrior as one of his fighter bonus feats.

====================

Now only warrior types can really take it. It is more powerful than weapon focus (or GWF) but generally less powerful than the mastery feats (at best you get an extra attack out of it at -5 in addition to the +1 overall). It's nice, if IMO, a little weak.

There is an argument for +2 BAB instead of +1, but that is a bit much. Humm, perhaps a follow-on feat that requires this one and gives a +2 BAB, that would be 2 feats for +3...

Mark

Ordained Champions from Complete Champion would LOVE like this feat! Trade in two Domain powers you weren't really using to get 2 fighter feats, and since the class is full BaB you can pick it up twice. Prestige Paladins (Unearthed Arcana,) Fists of Raziel (Book of Exalted Deeds,) and Knights of the Raven (Expedition to Castle Ravenloft) will also enjoy such a feat to offset their Clerical entry levels.

Hmm... Cleric 4 / Ordained Champion 5 / Prestige Paladin 1 / Fist or Knight 10. You lose out on 9th level spells which is nearly crippling, but with one feat you have 20 BaB and 8th level Clerical casting along with the class benefits. If you really wanted both you could just go Cleric 8 / Prestige Pal 2 / Fist or Knight 10 with 2 feats to boost BaB and Caster Progression of 18. Of course, with a Clerical base full BaB isn't as big of a concern, especially if you use Ordained Champion for it's Swift War Domain spells (like Divine Power.)

Edit: Oh, and what about Abjurant Champion (Complete Mage) Knight Phantom (Five Nations and online here) and the venerable Eldritch Knight (Dungeon Master's Guide)? A simple Wizard 5 / Fighter 1 / Eldritch Knight 9 / Abjurant Champion 5 would have base BaB 17 and 18th level casting.

You know, the more I look at this, it really doesn't seem to be such a big deal. But I'm not a big martial builder, so I don't know if there's a way to use fighter bonus feats and other class combos to make this over-powered.

 

[JiCi]

Here's my take:

Practiced Warrior [General]
Prerequisites: Proficiency with martial weapons, Weapon Specialization.

Benefit: Your equivalent fighter level is treated as 4 levels higher in terms of feat selection.

Special: One of the fighter's bonus feats

 

[green slime]

Here's my take:

Practiced Warrior [General]
Prerequisites: Proficiency with martial weapons, Weapon Specialization.

Benefit: Your equivalent fighter level is treated as 4 levels higher in terms of feat selection.

Special: One of the fighter's bonus feats

So a single classed 18th level fighter can take Epic Fighter feats?

 

[frankthedm]

How did you conclude that they're "not supposed to" do this?

Wotc said this themselves in the early era of 3E, Dragon magazine IIRC. That was why;

"Too ugly to Die"
Prerequisite
Charisma 9 or less Maybe it was 7 or so.

was cut from the 3.0 PHB. It got latter added in as

"Diehard"
Prerequisite
Endurance

In Sword and Fist.

 

[FatherTome]

Here's my take on the 'Practiced Warrior' issue, starting with my basic assumptions.

First, the consequence of losing full BAB progression is the delay of iterative attacks and the probable reduction of the maximum iterative attacks you can gain, as well as your ability to hit monsters.

Second, the consequence of losing full spell progression is the delay of levels of spells, spells per day, and the probable reduction of the maximum spell level you can gain, as well as caster level.

From a metamechanical standpoint, Weapon Focus = Practiced Spellcaster.

Here's my argument: Practiced Spellcaster grants you no additional spells per day or the ability to cast higher level spells than you were already capable of. It enhances your existing spells, possibly to a relatively significant degree.

Weapon Focus does not increase the speed at which you gain iterative attacks. It enhances your existing combat ability to a relatively minor degree, but you can still take it even while in a full BAB class. Since Weapon Focus is RAW, it lacks the sort of power creep displayed by feats such as Practiced Spellcaster - I can't recall offhand any other feat which effectively duplicates Weapon Focus, let alone surpasses it as far as effectiveness in what it does, because there exists a feat in the RAW that is used as a baseline since. Other than that, it does more or less the same thing for fighters that PS does for spellcasters.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Wotc said this themselves in the early era of 3E, Dragon magazine IIRC. That was why;

"Too ugly to Die"
Prerequisite
Charisma 9 or less Maybe it was 7 or so.

was cut from the 3.0 PHB. It got latter added in as

"Diehard"
Prerequisite
Endurance

In Sword and Fist.

You fundamentally misunderstood WotC's reasoning.

Too Ugly To Die was cut specifically because it made what was a penalty inherently required by the logic of the mechanics, in this case a low Cha score, into a benefit. Ever more peculiarly, this benefit is explicitly unavailable to someone with a higher Cha score.

Practiced Spellcaster is a feat that reduces a certain mechanical cost of a kind of build at the price of a feat. The moral equivalent of the example you cite would be a feat that gave a Fighter1/Wiz9 a caster level of Wiz11 that would be unavailable to a Wiz10.

The open question is whether the "penalty" of a lower caster level is a logical necessity of multiclassing. One could attempt to make such an argument, but the evidence seems rather thin and the counterarguments are very strong IMO.

A small peek into Complete Adventurer demonstrates the designers themselves see that many multiclass combinations effectively require a feat to "repair" problems in the multiclass mechanics.

The Practiced Spellcaster feat is not fundamentally different than the ~dozen multiclass feats in CV.

Now some have argued that Practiced Spellcaster is too potent in the hands of some monsters with many HD and modest spellcastig abilities. Perhaps. But that would be a corner case. And it is really a problem with how spellcaster levels are used in calculating CR, not an intrisic problem with the potency of Practiced Spellcaster itself.

 

[green slime]

Now some have argued that Practiced Spellcaster is too potent in the hands of some monsters with many HD and modest spellcastig abilities. Perhaps. But that would be a corner case. And it is really a problem with how spellcaster levels are used in calculating CR, not an intrisic problem with the potency of Practiced Spellcaster itself.

QFT

 

[glass]

So a single classed 18th level fighter can take Epic Fighter feats?

No, because nothing in the feat makes your character level 21, which is what [Epic] feats require.


glass.