FrankTrollman said:
Crothian said:
Ketjak said:
FrankTrollman said:
However there's a much bigger problem. The Desert Raider, the Pirate, the Crusader, and all the other "Fighter Variants" - are in fact different Core Classes. You can multiclass between them freely.
Frank, yesterday I asked for you to point these core classes out in the 3.5 core rulebooks. I looked again and didn't see them. Can you please help me find them?
I think they are from one of the Dragon Magazines.
And from Sword and Fist, and the DMG. And of course, they stack - which is to say that the more "official" Fighter Variant classes get printed, the more times you can take the first two levels of the Fighter Class. There are currently more than 10 such variants printed.
Ah! I see the source of your confusion. Thank you for finally pointing it out. I can understand your reluctance.
In Sword & Fist, Chapter 4, there are suggestions that help define the myriad possibilities inherent in the core Fighter class. You mistake the skill and feat lists there as
class feats and skills, instead of the suggestions they are. To quote the Sword & Fist chapter:
"In this chapter, we present several ways in which both players and DMs can take advantage of the rules of the game during play. The advice and additional rules herein expand and clarify many aspects of choices and their ramifications during the game.
"
Being All You Can Be
"One of the great things about the Dungeons & Dragons game remains its versatility. Have you ever wished that there were more character classes, so that you can play exactly the type of fighter or monk you want? Maybe you want to play a fighter who earns his gold thorough piracy rather than dungeon looting, or a monk who raids desert caravans rather than hangs about the monastery.
You can customize your character, without the necessity of creating a new character class, through ability-score prioritization, and the careful selection of skills and feats. Some of the roles discussed below share names or concepts with some of the prestige classes presented in chapter 2. The information and choices below offer another avenue of advancement, for those who just cannot wait for their character to qualify for the class in question."
I added the bold and italics to illustrate my next point.
Frank, those aren't new classes - they're examples of customization for flavor's sake. Your argument - that these are "better" Fighter variants than the Fighter - is now baseless, since you're basing it on
customization of the Fighter class itself! Obviously, one cannot claim the Fighter is limited by pointing to customized Fighters to point out its limitations.
Further argument based on that premise is just noise.
FrankTrollman said:
So, if we accept that the first two levels of Fighter are not unbalanced - and all of your levels out to twenty can be the first two levels of Fighter (which they can) - how can we possibly say that the levels after the first two should give less than the first two.
That the Fighter is front-loaded slightly is no different than the Ranger, Paladin, Cleric, and Wizard being front loaded.
FrankTrollman said:
One feat per level is the minimum acceptable Fighter - because you can just multiclass with Fighter and do that anyway.
You do not understand the multiclass rules. These are easy to miss, though fortunately this restriction is also in line with common sense. A character that already has levels in a class cannot "multiclass" into it again; the new level gets added to the old ones. Under "Adding a Second Class" on page 59 of the PHB 3.5:
"When a character with one class gains a level, he or she may choose to increase the level of his or her current class or pick up a new class at 1st level. (A character can't gain 1st level in the same class more than once, even if this would allow him to select different class features, such as a different set of domains for a cleric.)"
FrankTrollman said:
Now it is an entirely seperate problem that I simply completely reject the notion that Fighters are any better at Fighting than Rangers are - they don't get more feats at the crucial lower levels and have less combat skills and worse saves.
You contradict yourself. Fighters get more
combat feats than anyone else. You have pointed this out, both in your citation of the versatility of the Fighter class in Sword & Fist and in your habitual use of the first two Fighter levels. Track is not a combat feat; Endurance is not a combat feat. They do not affect combat, and are therefore not combat feats.
Please choose a position:
Fighters
do not get more combat feats than Rangers at lower levels OR
Fighter
do get more combat feats than Rangers at lower levels.
They're exclusive, which is why your statements are confusing.
FrankTrollman said:
A character with maxxed Spot is more likely to be able to act in the surprise round, a character with maxxed Move Silently is more likely to prevent opponents from acting in the surprise round. Add those together, and the Ranger's Skills will often represent a shift of two whole rounds worth of actions. In a game where combats rarely last more than six rounds total - that's a huge hole that a Fighter is having to dig himslf out of.
It's not so large a hole as your hyperbole makes it out to be. A surprise round allows folks who are active in them to have ONE standard action. See pg. 137 of the PHB 3.5. If you're impatient, skip to the bold section that starts with "Surprise round." The restriction of actions during surprise rounds has been in place since 3.0.
The Fighter can make up that difference with ease over the course of a 3-round combat. Compare damage output.
FrankTrollman said:
And as previously noted, the Fighter does not have more feats than the Ranger at low levels (and at higher levels, there are PrCs and Animal Companions and stuff making comparison extremely difficult).
Your argument is that the Fighter is underpowered and unbalanced and, therefore, sucks. Your own citations of versatile Fighter builds show the versatility of Fighters. Your own choice of the first two levels of Fighter in every build shows that they are not under-powered early on, at least. The focus of Fighters on combat makes up for the lack of non-combat abilities. They have more combat feats than Rangers, no matter how many times you ignore my builds or choose not to build any yourself. That's okay, because your citations show Fighters that are good at non-combat abilities "through ability-score prioritization, and the careful selection of skills and feats!" Perhaps Fighters are
over-powered.
The facts are that a Ranger is no better than a Fighter at combat except under two circumstances, both of which are very narrow and are mitigated by additional feat selections the Fighter can make:
1 - at 11th level, the Ranger gets Improved Precise Shot or Greater Two Weapon Fighting. The Fighter must wait until 12th to get either of those, and in the meantime must console himself with using the mere Whirlwind Attack, Mounted Combat tree mastery, or a bevy of other feats which improve his mastery of combat.
2 - When the Fighter has only Weapon Specialization (+2 damage to all foes with a specific weapon) to keep him busy until GWS (+4 damage to all foes with the specific weapon) at 12th level, the Ranger can take a favored enemy twice again at 5th level (+4 damage against a single group of critters). If he does not, the Fighter does as much damage to the Ranger's favored enemy. The Ranger can keep ahead of the Fighter in damage by taking that favored enemy again at 10th, resulting in +6 damage to those guys. He will forever stay ahead of the Fighter against those critters in damage output per hit... except that he hits that favored enemy less than the Fighter because the Fighter took Greater Weapon Focus at 8th.
The Fighter uses his specialized weapon a great deal more than the Ranger faces his favored enemy, unless the campaign is very restricted in scope and that enemy is prevalent. In that case, you
might be better off taking a Ranger... but again, that's a campaign-specific problem, not a problem inherent in either class.
PrCs and Animal Companions
do make comparisons difficult. Fortunately, the Fighter's wide combat feat selection, high AC, and greater overall damage output allow the Fighter to match the damage output of the Ranger/pet combo... except auto-flanking.
FrankTrollman said:
So we look at someone who is not better at "Fighting" and is worse at other activities. That's not balanced. Heck, even at one feat per level, I'm not seeing a significant bulge of Fighters over Rangers in combat (especially if the Ranger gets a Favored Enemy which is common in his campaign). And the non-combat functionality differential is huge.
Perhaps in your campaign. Your mileage may vary as others have said. If you fight nothing but goblins and have to argue for goblin-hunting rights, the Ranger might be better suited to succeed in that campaign. The core rules, however, present two very well-balanced classes in the Fighter and Ranger. Four, including the Barbarian and Paladin. They're all good at different activities. The Fighter is best at combat. The primary class ability (bonus combat feats) doesn't lie.
FrankTrollman said:
Now: as to the different number of rolls of Attack vs. Diplomacy - that's irrelevent. In a combat, you roll a bunch of attack rolls - but succeeding or failing at an individual attack doesn't make you win or lose the combat. You need to succeed many times on attack rolls before you make any meaningful difference.
Tell that to the Fighter greatsword specialist with Power Attack, or the raging Barbarian.
One hit makes a huge difference.
FrankTrollman said:
OTOH, a Diplomacy roll is all-or-nothing. Success on that one roll is a bigger deal. It makes you "win" the encounter. Failure makes you "lose". That's a big deal. Much bigger than a single attack roll. The net result of +1 to all of your attacks is thus about the same as +1 to all of your diplomacy rolls - more rolls with a smaller individual effect makes each +1 bonus statistically more similar - but doesn't actually make that bonus any statistically larger.
On a 1000 attack rolls, you are very likely to see about 50 additional hits with a +1 attack bonus. On 100 Diplomacy Rolls you are going to see a spread of between about 2 and about 10 additional successes with a +1 to Diplomacy checks. But hitting 50 extra times isn't a bigger deal than succeeding at 5 more Diplomacy checks.
You use partial explanations of the same equation to try to strengthen your point. Both situations use the same die rolls and have the same probabilities of success. Assume CHA and STR are the same for both rollers. In that case, a +1 equals a +1 in terms of probability of success. You will see "between about 2 and about 10 successes" using Diplomacy as much as you will see "between about 20 and 100 additional hits."
I'd say hitting about 50 extra times at any damage per hit is as big a deal as 5 more Diplomacy checks! Even at low levels that's an average of 250 points of damage.
At high levels it's more like 1,500 points of damage.
Finally, your attempt to marginalize the effect of Greater Weapon Focus speaks to deliberate avoidance of recognition of the Fighter's superiority in combat.
