Mustrum's Mythical Fighter Techniques

[WarlockLord]

It is a trade off it gives the ability to power his save after all if he is trapped he not using his combat resources.

It is it not nerfing it in every situation unless your fighter spends all his time in magical traps and fails his save every single time.

In that situation he is not strong as he usually is as a fighter but he is till got all his basic abilities plus he is not stuck in a magical constraint.

I am all for giving the fighter more power but not making him so powerful that he never fails or that he he gets special abilities without limitations.

Really in every dungeon you have fought in that is all you have done? There was no secret passages or other ways for them to escape? how utterly and completely boring.

Why is it when anyone gives a solution to an issue to reign in and control things by DM design rather then mechanical changes someone will always say well that won't work on this situation?

I don't know how we have fought dragons and Balors for over 30 years without fighters having a supernatural ability to fly.

Oh wait I know we work as team and use good tactics one which is trying to fight the dragon on the ground but if that doesn't work I have seen the wizard cast fly on the party members best suited for going toe to toe with the dragon. Which was usually the fighter or the rogue. A wizard can still fire ranged spells at the dragon in the air the archers can fire arrows at it.

Another solution we have used was to get potions of fly in case everyone needed to be able to fly.

Another solution without breaking the believability for a lot of us is an item for the fighter to be able to activate that allows him to fly.

So that puts the fighter squarely back into the wizard lackey corner. If he cannot meaningfully engage flying foes on his own without the aid of a wizard, there's really no reason to bring him along when you could cast the fly spell on the wizards and clerics who can actually do things? And the "fly item" goes back to the 3.5 Christmas Tree syndrome people hated where warriors needed to be blinged out in magic crap to do their job, while the wizard,cleric, and druid could give all their loot to the fighter and pick up the slack with their spells.

Yes, you can make everyone groundbound and spout about archery and ranged spells, but the balor and the dragon have superhuman intelligence. It's really not hard for them to figure out that if they fly out of arrow range and drop giant rocks that they can attack the party with complete impunity.

As for your complaining about "fighters having abilities without fail..." well, wizards, clerics, and monsters have all had these kinds of abilities for a while. Is it too much to ask for the fighter class to step up to the plate for once?

Lastly, for your insightful observation of how the DM should fix things rather than claim mechanics are broken, I present the Oberoni fallacy. Because the DM can change the rules doesn't mean they aren't broken.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I owned horses and rode competitively and while it is true horse don't run as fast with more weight hence small jockeys it is not as much as what you are suggesting.

I figure you were not really fighting the Horse and trying to kill it.

Okay does the fighter still have to roll to hit? Also he should be taking some kind of penalty for being on a dragons back without a saddle he has to use at least one hand to hold on. He should not be able to just have his normal melee attack.

He has to hit to initiate the grab, and whatever else happens afterwards is pretty much grapple, plus specifically the allowance to make melee attacks normally. And no, he doesn't have any penalties, that's why it's a special ability and costs Stamina. He exerts the effort to keep on the Dragon. It could very well be that his melee attacks are just trying to thrust his sword even deeper into the dragon - it may be that the sword in the beast's wing is the only thing keeping him on.

People that don't have the Fighter's abilities should be able to improvise the same general tactic - but they have to make due without jumping 4 times the normal range and height, and without any advantages. But that's up to the DM and the player's ability to improvise. But I don't want the mythic fighter's ability to end up as a straightjacket like many feats especially in the 3E acted - once a feat allowed doing something, it basically was assumed you needed the feat or couldn't even try. and this was the way things worked in RAW. So it could be best if you didn't know too many feats so you had more improvisation opportunities.

So to counter fly you want a fighter to be able to wipe out a wizards protections in most combats. If a fighter gets on a wizard and goes toe to toe you will have a dead wizard this is without your extra kick thing. Wizards do not usually have the hit points or the armor to go toe to toe with a fighter.

The Fighter wipes out _one_ protective ability. Not several. This isn't a Greater Dispelling or Anti-Magic Field the Fighter uses against the Wizard. And it costs him 3 Stamina, which is about a third of what the Fighter has at the level he gets the ability. Mage Armor is a third of what a _first_ level Wizard has in 1st level spells.

Do your parties not have ranged weapons to deal with a wizard flying and casting spells. Do you not have clerics, druids and other mages to summon flying creatures or throw area spells at the flying wizard?

Do your Wizards not have henchmen that keep Fighters off their back? Was the removal of Protection from Arrows, Dispel Magic and Dismissal or Banishment already confirmed?

As I said -you can come up with "clever" tricks to try to circumvent a Wizard's defenses - but you can also come up with "clever" tricks to strengthen the Wizard's defenses as well. That just doesn't work as your balancing mechanic.

The clever tricks is what you use after the standard operation procedures says "well, if we do this, both sides are even." and realize that you want a better than 50:50 chance to beat your enemy. And then the really interesting part beings - who used the "cleverer" tricks?

 

[Elf Witch]

So that puts the fighter squarely back into the wizard lackey corner. If he cannot meaningfully engage flying foes on his own without the aid of a wizard, there's really no reason to bring him along when you could cast the fly spell on the wizards and clerics who can actually do things? And the "fly item" goes back to the 3.5 Christmas Tree syndrome people hated where warriors needed to be blinged out in magic crap to do their job, while the wizard,cleric, and druid could give all their loot to the fighter and pick up the slack with their spells.

Yes, you can make everyone groundbound and spout about archery and ranged spells, but the balor and the dragon have superhuman intelligence. It's really not hard for them to figure out that if they fly out of arrow range and drop giant rocks that they can attack the party with complete impunity.

As for your complaining about "fighters having abilities without fail..." well, wizards, clerics, and monsters have all had these kinds of abilities for a while. Is it too much to ask for the fighter class to step up to the plate for once?

Lastly, for your insightful observation of how the DM should fix things rather than claim mechanics are broken, I present the Oberoni fallacy. Because the DM can change the rules doesn't mean they aren't broken.

I don't know what type of games you play in but the fighters in my games are never lackeys but then we play as a team. You are right it is hard for a fighter to take care of a flying creature by himself but that is why he has team with him who can help.

While the people who can take care of the flying wizard are doing that the fighter is dealing with the ground troops.

As for flying creatures it is hard for any group to handle a dragon on wing and that is how it should be they are creatures of legend. The best way to fight a a dragon is get surprise and make sure it can't take wing.

Fighters are not the best for fighting undead clerics are so I guess now that makes the fighter the cleric lackey.

Why don't we just get rid of all classes and have just one called the adventurer who can fight as well as a fighter, do magic as well as a wizard and can heal and deal with undead as well as a cleric and can handle traps and things that rogues do.

The whole point of magic items is to give mundanes the ability to boost there skills using magic a fighter with a ring of fly will still be a better fighter than a wizard who has taken a feat to use a sword and has cast fly. I can't think of any item that gives a wizard the same bab and number of feats a fighter gets.

The only way to get around this is to either make everyone magical or make no one magical.

You know that there are more different encounters than just dragons and balors right? And that not every encounter will allow every one to be the star of that encounter and that in a well designed campaign the DM should be designing a variety of encounters that gives everyone a chance to be the star.

The last dragon we fought I was playing a sorcerer who could fly I cast it on myself and the rogue the rogue was the one who did most of the damage because I had difficulty getting through the darn thing's SR. The paladin and the warlock were busy dealing with the dragon's ally the spell casting vampire who even though I was flying managed to knock me out of the sky with two well place fire balls and then a dispel. I certainly was not the star that day nor were the others my lackey in any way.

There is no reason to make a meta game rule that wipes out any kind of verisimilitude when you can easily solve the fighter's inability to fly by giving them an item that allows him to do so.

 

[Elf Witch]

I figure you were not really fighting the Horse and trying to kill it.

He has to hit to initiate the grab, and whatever else happens afterwards is pretty much grapple, plus specifically the allowance to make melee attacks normally. And no, he doesn't have any penalties, that's why it's a special ability and costs Stamina. He exerts the effort to keep on the Dragon. It could very well be that his melee attacks are just trying to thrust his sword even deeper into the dragon - it may be that the sword in the beast's wing is the only thing keeping him on.

People that don't have the Fighter's abilities should be able to improvise the same general tactic - but they have to make due without jumping 4 times the normal range and height, and without any advantages. But that's up to the DM and the player's ability to improvise. But I don't want the mythic fighter's ability to end up as a straightjacket like many feats especially in the 3E acted - once a feat allowed doing something, it basically was assumed you needed the feat or couldn't even try. and this was the way things worked in RAW. So it could be best if you didn't know too many feats so you had more improvisation opportunities.

Do your Wizards not have henchmen that keep Fighters off their back? Was the removal of Protection from Arrows, Dispel Magic and Dismissal or Banishment already confirmed?

As I said -you can come up with "clever" tricks to try to circumvent a Wizard's defenses - but you can also come up with "clever" tricks to strengthen the Wizard's defenses as well. That just doesn't work as your balancing mechanic.

The clever tricks is what you use after the standard operation procedures says "well, if we do this, both sides are even." and realize that you want a better than 50:50 chance to beat your enemy. And then the really interesting part beings - who used the "cleverer" tricks?

Have you ever seen a horse fighting for its life with a cougar on its back? They roll, buck, and run as fast as they can while trying to get the creature of their back. They run under low hanging branches.

A dragon which is highly intelligent would use all these tactics and more. I think it is great that the fighter can use stamina to get on the dragons back and then use stamina to succeed at a ride check. just those two things alone are pretty powerful because a dragon flying is incredibly powerful.

 

[WarlockLord]

I don't know what type of games you play in but the fighters in my games are never lackeys but then we play as a team. You are right it is hard for a fighter to take care of a flying creature by himself but that is why he has team with him who can help.

While the people who can take care of the flying wizard are doing that the fighter is dealing with the ground troops.

As for flying creatures it is hard for any group to handle a dragon on wing and that is how it should be they are creatures of legend. The best way to fight a a dragon is get surprise and make sure it can't take wing.

Fighters are not the best for fighting undead clerics are so I guess now that makes the fighter the cleric lackey.

Why don't we just get rid of all classes and have just one called the adventurer who can fight as well as a fighter, do magic as well as a wizard and can heal and deal with undead as well as a cleric and can handle traps and things that rogues do.

The whole point of magic items is to give mundanes the ability to boost there skills using magic a fighter with a ring of fly will still be a better fighter than a wizard who has taken a feat to use a sword and has cast fly. I can't think of any item that gives a wizard the same bab and number of feats a fighter gets.

The only way to get around this is to either make everyone magical or make no one magical.

You know that there are more different encounters than just dragons and balors right? And that not every encounter will allow every one to be the star of that encounter and that in a well designed campaign the DM should be designing a variety of encounters that gives everyone a chance to be the star.

The last dragon we fought I was playing a sorcerer who could fly I cast it on myself and the rogue the rogue was the one who did most of the damage because I had difficulty getting through the darn thing's SR. The paladin and the warlock were busy dealing with the dragon's ally the spell casting vampire who even though I was flying managed to knock me out of the sky with two well place fire balls and then a dispel. I certainly was not the star that day nor were the others my lackey in any way.

There is no reason to make a meta game rule that wipes out any kind of verisimilitude when you can easily solve the fighter's inability to fly by giving them an item that allows him to do so.

First, I fail to see how "fighters can learn to fly" violates verisimilitude if that's a fact of the world and everyone knows it. I don't think that word means what you think it means. Likewise, metagame. That means it relates to the fact that it's a game. If in flying-fighter verse everyone knows that due to the laws of physics which support giants and wizards, you can fly by learning enough kung-fu, it's not metagaming.

Second, you had a sorceror. You know, the class that most people think is worse than the wizard because they get less spells. One could make an argument that a competent wizard could solo that encounter, but I don't know the level. But regardless, spell resistance is widely considered not an actual defense due to the prevalence of summons, polymorphing/replacing fighters, conjuration, and other things. I don't know what level you were at. But there's a difference from the caster you're describing, and the caster in an optimized game who walks in with an army of the dead, persisted defenses, and a few planar bound bruisers. THAT guy would have soloed the above encounter without breaking a sweat.

So, compared to that kind of caster, how are we overpowering fighters again?

 

[Underman]

First, I fail to see how "fighters can learn to fly" violates verisimilitude if that's a fact of the world and everyone knows it. I don't think that word means what you think it means. Likewise, metagame. That means it relates to the fact that it's a game. If in flying-fighter verse everyone knows that due to the laws of physics which support giants and wizards, you can fly by learning enough kung-fu, it's not metagaming.

You fail to see how? Perhaps you could start your own thread about this topic in order to elicit other opinions about mundane vs mythic fighter. Oh wait, you already did.

 

[Kraydak]

So that puts the fighter squarely back into the wizard lackey corner. If he cannot meaningfully engage flying foes on his own without the aid of a wizard, there's really no reason to bring him along when you could cast the fly spell on the wizards and clerics who can actually do things? And the "fly item" goes back to the 3.5 Christmas Tree syndrome people hated where warriors needed to be blinged out in magic crap to do their job, while the wizard,cleric, and druid could give all their loot to the fighter and pick up the slack with their spells.

But you are massively misdiagnosing the problem. If the Wizard can fight (through self-buffing or offensive spells) as well as a Fighter, then that, not the availability of Flight, is the problem. Interdependency is a good thing. Having classes be different is a good thing. We want a case where if we have:
2 Fighters: they shoot the flying thing a bunch, but ultimately can't force a conclusion.
2 Wizards: they cast Flight on themselves, but if they chase down the monster, they'll just get their heads bit off. So they run away.
1 Fighter+1 Wizard: the Wizard casts Flight on the Fighter, who then proceeds chops the monster down.

Voila: class distinction with interdependency, a flightless fighter and balance through "you can't compare apples and oranges".

 

[WarlockLord]

You fail to see how? Perhaps you could start your own thread about this topic in order to elicit other opinions about mundane vs mythic fighter. Oh wait, you already did.

Well, seeing as we are discussing mythic fighters and our frame of reference is "in this fantasy world, you can do awesome things normal people can't do by doing push-ups. For instance, you can fly."

Or are you going to tell me that it breaks verisimilitude that a wizard can put a bunch of dudes to sleep by saying some funny words and waggling his fingers?
[MENTION=12306]Kraydak[/MENTION]: Are we seriously saying that only one class should be good at combat? Because I don't think people want to be told that their druid's lightning sucks compared to stabbing things any more than stabby people want to sit on the ground and watch the flying wizard throw finger of deaths at the dragon. Ideally, all classes would be able to contribute in all situations just in different ways.

 

[Underman]

Well, seeing as we are discussing mythic fighters and our frame of reference is "in this fantasy world, you can do awesome things normal people can't do by doing push-ups. For instance, you can fly."

Or are you going to tell me that it breaks verisimilitude that a wizard can put a bunch of dudes to sleep by saying some funny words and waggling his fingers?

Nevertheless, or in spite of that, my insinuation remains: the thread that you started already explored those questions -- including but not limited to explorations of verisimilitude of magic and perspectives on flying fighters -- and so it's disheartening to read your questions posed as if that thread that you started never existed or had no impact. I guess I and others have spent our 50 stamina points and all failed our rolls.

 

[Kraydak]

[MENTION=12306]Kraydak[/MENTION]: Are we seriously saying that only one class should be good at combat? Because I don't think people want to be told that their druid's lightning sucks compared to stabbing things any more than stabby people want to sit on the ground and watch the flying wizard throw finger of deaths at the dragon. Ideally, all classes would be able to contribute in all situations just in different ways.

Yes? Because if we don't, and classes are differentiated, then the Fighter doesn't have a reason to exist (maaaaaybe, if you combine the Fighter and Rogue into a single class, but then you'd have to be willing to tolerate stealthy, mobile fullplate wearing two-handed sword wielders). There is, of course, room for some hybridized classes (such as Paladins), which also helps fill out smaller adventuring parties. Also, experience shows that "being the only class that can heal", while balanced ("every party needs a cleric"), kinda sucks as a raison-d'etre.