Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="evilbob" data-source="post: 4718172" data-attributes="member: 9789">Sorry I'm late to this party and I haven't read through the last 9 pages, but I just wanted to say that my own personal experience differs greatly from that of Mr. Heinsoo.  In fact, it was so different I honestly wonder if perhaps his personal experience was, in fact, a bit unusual.In my experience, 3.5 fighters hold their own well up past level 11 - especially two-handed weapon fighters.  It's actually closer to level 15 - when 8th level spells become available but more importantly 6th and 7th level spells become more common - when the power level is less even, and then level 16 comes along and boosts the fighter again.  But then level 17 happens, and suddenly it swings back against the fighter pretty heavily.On the other hand, how many games actually get to level 17?  (By the end of the 3.5 life cycle, I had a personal rule:  never start a game under level 6.)The main thing is that a fighter at level 11 can attack 3 times and will almost certainly hit 3 times.  And each of those attacks should be dealing gobs and gobs of damage.  And frankly, there's no reason you should ever -not- be able to do that damage, given the crazy amounts of potions and spells and wands and things that get thrown around in 3.5 - you can always get to the target, and frankly the target wants to get to you.I've seen the most broken 3.5 cleric combination ever in play, and it still couldn't top a fighter for direct damage because a fighter gets everything the cleric can do PLUS feats.  Wizards can throw some pretty vicious save-or-dies around, but honestly fighters are more reliable because they hit more often and their damage is more guaranteed.In my experience, the fighter's player being absent would have been much more important to the game than the cleric or wizard, except for one thing:  it was incredibly easy for someone else to NPC the fighter.  That's really the difference:  to NPC a cleric or a wizard, you have to be versed in dozens of spells and combos and tactics.  For the fighter, you pretty much had to know what dice to roll.  Sure they probably had a few tricks as well, but nothing like the casters.But overall, given the choice?  I'd place the fighter dead last on the list of "characters we can start the game without."  Sure, clerics and wizards are next-to-last, but it's not like we're talking about a monk here.  If the monk didn't show up I wonder if anyone would notice?  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

Verification