Very intelligent arguments, takyris. However...
takyris said:
Well, at low levels, he doesn't have that many rages per day...
The fighter is the one who can exclusively have more completed feat-chains -- the one who can have whirlwind attack AND great cleave by sixth level, or whatever it is.
These two are not relevant to my point, since I wasn't suggesting that there's any problem with the fighter below, say, 10th level. It's the higher levels that get bad.
That's true to a point, but only to a point. The fighter's flexibility in combat is his exclusivity. He can be a weapon specialist, a tank, AND an archer. He has the feats to make that possible. Or he can be any two of those three and leave some non-fighter feats for save-boosting feats or improved initiative or other useful things. If your campaign is one that allows someone with a very limited focus fight well in that focus in every fight, then yeah, we're in different campaigns. If the DM never makes some fights start at close range, some fights start at long range, and some fights involve ground obstacles, then, uh, yeah, a limited focus guy shines. Otherwise, the generalist is ultimately better, because he's good at everything, as opposed to being great at one thing and lousy at the rest.
I guess we really disagree on the usefulness of generalist abilities. IMX, in whichever game I've played, D&D rewards specialization, period. This is reflected in every character optimization strategy I have ever seen, for casters as much as for fighter types. Moreover, this is especially true in a PC-party situation. If the fighter can be out-ranged-combated by the casters or archer PrC specialists, out-meleed by the barbarian, and out-tumbled by the rogue or monk, he's going to be second fiddle in every combat situation. Jack of all trades, master of none.
Does it smack of contrivance for an evil wizard to see that the party is heading towards his castle and try dirty tricks to get them to waste some of their spells/limited abilities beforehand? An illusion of a dragon, for example, to get the party to cast a bunch of buff spells (which will then wear off too soon to be of use in the real fight), for example? Or letting the party throw up their buff spells in the wizard's dimensionally anchored (everyone but him, specified as per the rules of the hallow(?) spell) lair and then tossing up a wall of force between himself and them, smiling smugly while their summoned monsters and Haste spells wither on the vine? I'm not talking about saying, "No, you can't rest, a magical spell stops you from regaining spells." I'm talking about good solid tactics. I mean, if I know that the enemy archer has only three arrows, you're darn right that I'm gonna try and make him waste those arrows while I'm under full cover.
The fact that your PCs fall for this stuff may be problem #1. In general, it appears to me that you play your villains with vastly more intelligence (both in the cognitive and reconaissance sense) than your players are using. I use these sorts of tactics all the time, and my players respond: With illusion detection.
greater dispelling, and smash-smash-smash.
Same deal with barbarian's rage. If I've never heard of the party, that's one thing -- but most major villains in my campaign have watched the party decimate their henchmen, and so they've seen what the party can do.
You've got some incautious PCs, then. My own high-level party takes every imaginable step to ensure that the villains (well, the living ones, anyway) know as little as possible about them. You're saying that class abilities can be neutralized by good intelligence; that's true for all classes, including the fighter.
Thus, they have plans to take away the party's strengths. I mean, that's what Divination spells are for, right? Or do you play in a happy campaign where the evil wizards are nothing but fireball machines who don't actually use intelligent tactics when faced with a party of tactically minded PCs?
No, I play with tactically minded PCs, I guess. And as you said, good NPC tactics sap the
party's strengths; their impact is one of general applicability, to use lawyer-ese.
If I'm the evil wizard, I'm gonna make darn sure that I attack the barbarian when he's nice and winded (assuming he's at a level when post-rage means winded). If he outsmarts me, good for him, but the winded thing is in there for a reason. It shouldn't NEVER come up, just like the wizard shouldn't NEVER run out of spells he needs. If he never does, your campaign is too easy, and your fighter is getting shafted.
This is a vast generalization. If you can catch a Bbn10 when he's winded, he's made a really big mistake, and isn't playing all that well. It's not an issue of the campaign being "too easy," but the players not being smart.
If DM "tactics" smack of contrivance to you, I pity your DM. You must have harried him into having nice stupid monsters who start out at the range you like and don't do any tactics that would negate your abilities.
I
am the DM, and my monsters certainly don't fight stupidly, thank you. However, at high levels, fighters actually do WORSE against smart monsters than casters or other fighter-types in most cases, because all they can do is FIGHT. Rangers have a more useful skill set, archer PrCs do ranged better, rogues have a ton of useful abilities, and barbs move faster, have more hp, and do more damage when it
is time to melee. WWA, AoO increase abilities, and Cleave are the first things to vanish when you face tactically-minded opponents. What you're calling "versatility" ends up being, as Grog put it regarding the mystic theurge, "more ways to suck."
And here, I agree with you, at least in large part. I don't necessary want to see "abilities that only the fighter gets", but I'd have no problem with more high-level feats that either a) require a ton of different feats to get, making it likely that only a fighter can get them without making every feat he takes devoted to it, or b) fighter-only feats, like weapon specialization. For the record, I'm not a fan of weapon specialization -- unless I've got three falchions on me, I'm just one disarm attempt away from losing several of my best feats. But I would like to see other fighter-specific or fighter-only-likely-to-get feats, especially higher-level ones.
Fine with me too, actually (I'm glad we agree on something!). However, keep in mind that high-level feats are unlikely to present substantially more difficulty to get to a Ftr6/other class x than to a straight fighter.
