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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FrankTrollman" data-source="post: 1124519" data-attributes="member: 14225">All of them.Some of them literally give "one bonus feat" such as the Guardian Paramount or something, some of them give you a specific feat such as "Great Cleave (and a bonus to tumble) for the Master Samurai, "Weapon Specialization" (and Mettle) for the Templar or "Improved Feint" for the Gladiator. And some just give you a special ability that is as good or better than a feat, such as "Defensive Blow +2" (and a bonus against Fear) for the Knight Protector.The point is that there are literally thousands of these choices. Your choices are so vast when levelling that taking a "bonus feat" of anything off the Fighter list is actually more restrictive than taking one of the prestige class abilities designed for a warrior character. Whether you want to expand your melee, archery, grappling, tripping, or whatever else - taking classes other than Fighter levels has got you covered.Why take Weapon Specialization by taking two more levels of Fighter when you could get it and the really nice "mettle" ability with only one level of Templar? Your other level could be Ranger and you'd be way ahead on skill points and get some other minor ability as well.And so on.No, you can't.Everytime you take a level of a class that gives you Sneak Attack, you start your BAB over again (not counting people like the OotBI who have a limited Sneak Attack and a Fighter's BAB). Even though there are in fact hundreds of published classes which give a Sneak Attack at level 1, thereby allowing you to take only levels that give you sneak attack from level 6 through 20 - you wouldn't by any good if you did that.See, while you'd get +1d6 sneak attack every level, you'd also get +0 BAB every level. So at 20th level, you'd have +18d6 sneak attack, but only a BAB of +3. You could TWF or something, and hand out as many as 36d6 of sneak attack every round.The straight Rogue, OTOH, has only 10d6 Sneak Attack, but a BAB of +15/+10/+5. With just TWF, he attacks four times a round with all better attack bonuses for a total of 40d6 of sneak attack every round.Rogue levels don't stack the way Fighter levels do. A Rogue class needs to jstify each set of four levels (the time it takes to finish out the BAB progression and keep it from falling behind). A Fighting class needs to justify every level (because that's how many levels it takes to finish out the BAB progression and keep from falling behind).I'm sitting here looking at level five of Fighter. It gives no save bonuses, it gives the worst skills in the entire game, and it gives no special abilities at all. How can you say that that level justifies itself against anything?That happens to the Fighter nine times. That class has nine levels that can't be justified in actually taking.In order to be balanced it would need to have an ability every level. It would also need to not be in all ways inferior to other sampled classes that give an ability (or more) every level. That means that every level it would need to provide a minor bonus in addition to the bonus feat (similar to a Master Sanurai's Tumble Bonus or a Knight Protector's Shining Beacon) or have better skills and skill points.That's the minimum just to make the class no longer objectively inferior to not taking the class in the first place.-Frank</blockquote>

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