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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FrankTrollman" data-source="post: 1121055" data-attributes="member: 14225">Lots of people have broken the classes down into some sort of point system. That's where the disagreements come in.You see, combat utility is not the same as non-combat utility. No amount of one can justify a bulge or dirth of the other. Bards are weak in combat, and thus despite their significant breadth of non-combat utility they suck. Fighters are useless out of combat, so whatever else they do, they suck.Furthermore, spells are not of equal value. A first level attack spell (such as Sleep or Color Spray) is a very big deal at levels 1 or 2, but is in fact of no value whatsoever at levels 16 or 17.The most common system of breaking down character classes is one based on the idea of "feat equivalents" - idea being that you are judging how many feats it would take a Commoner to turn into that character. Now there's no feat that gives a Base Attack Bonus, and there are limits to how many bonuses to saves you can get - but if we lift those restrictions we see a fairly good approximation.For example, a 6th level Fighter has 3 BAB, 3 Fort Save, 21 hit points, 3 Armor Proficiency Feats, 2 Shield Proficiency Feats, and 2 Martial Weapon Proficiency Feats over the Commoner (whatever melee and ranged weapon you happen to use). Further, he just plain has 4 bonus feats on top of that which are more valuable because they are selected instead of arbitrarily assigned.Alternately, a 6th level Rogue has 1 BAB, 3 Reflex Save, 7 hit points, 1 Armor Proficiency Feat, 2 Martial Weapon Proficiency Feats, and 54 skill points. Further the Rogue has the Traps ability, the Evasion ability, the Uncanny Dodge ability, and 3 dice of sneak attack.The Fighter could be roughly simulated by a 6th level Commoner with 17 feats and 4 "bonus" feats. The Rogue could be roughly simulated by a 6th level Commoner with 26 feats (of which 13 are limitedly customizable).Now, this is a very limited system, as it implies that people care as much about Medium Armor Proficiency as they do about Light Armor Proficiency (which is patently false). Furthermore, it requires that people spend their feats into Toughness (for 3 hit points a pop) or Skill Synnergy (for 4 skill points a pop) - which is patently absurd. Also, it doesn't really address the Rogue's much larger skill list - which is probably worth a feat or three.Nevertheless, this kind of analysis has been done and the Fighter universally comes out very very poorly in it.The fact is that a bonus feat is not better than +10' of movement. It is not better than the ability to Rage. And the Barbarian gets both at first level and has more hit points and more skill points.If you jack up the Fighter's Skill points to 4/level, and  you give the Fighter a bonus feat every level from first level through twentieth, they still don't do all that well in that kind of analysis.-Frank</blockquote>

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