Fighters -must- wear heavy armor

[Brother MacLaren]

I agree that movement rate is important for melee guys. 20 is too low. (Not that 30 is enough for fleeing as most monsters are faster. IMX you can't run until you get dimension door.) How about a level of barbarian and mithral full plate? That counts as medium armor so he can still spring attack, but with a move of 30. But now the SAer isn't exactly lightly armored, in fact he has the strongest armor in the game this side of adamantine.

In general, a higher movement rate is better -- not for running away, but for moving around in a spread-out battle with many combatants (which has been the norm in my experience). Coming to the aid of allies, running down enemy casters, and so on.

Now, I do think that mithral fullplate is far too good. It isn't a problem of the game not providing a niche for the light-armored fighter; the game provides that, and then introduces one particular item to open up the niche to heavily-armored PCs. It's like how Knock makes Open Locks less useful, or how a Ring of Evasion gives one of the biggest benefits of the rogue class to any PC, or how Divine Power lets the cleric surpass the fighter. A few simple excisions would solve a lot of problems without really disrupting the game's balance.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

You built a str fighter who only gets one attack per round in exchange for only getting hit once. Both are a viable option

Exactly. I've been responding all along to the assertion that 3.5 only supports heavy-armored fighters. It is my point of view that light-armored fighters also work pretty well, largely due to Spring Attack. You don't NEED to add rogue levels to make the light-armored fighter a viable alternative to the heavy-armored fighter -- but fighter vs. fighter was the initial point of comparison.

Then you brought the rogue in as a point of comparison: "Sure, his [the rogue's] hp and bab are weaker, but his sneak attack deals Sooo much more damage than any light-armor fighter build can. He's great at hit-n-runs, twf, and archery (depending on your mood)" (emphasis added)
Not the swashbuckler. ANY light-armor fighter build. Those were your words. And, as an archer, the fighter remains better than the rogue because of his better BAB, longbow proficiency, and higher Str.

Back to Ftr-vs-Ftr. The SA fighter has several advantages over the HA fighter. His greater mobility makes it easier to come to the aid of an ally, to move the enemy around the battlefield, and to deal with enemies with reach or with enemies who have a greater number of attacks than he does (such as TWF opponents). His touch AC is a bit higher (and that is a big deal). He's also got some disadvantages. If he needs to, he can stand still and full-attack, but his AC won't be as good (and his HP might not be as good either, since he put more points into Dex).

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Since this has devolved into "how does it work in 3.x?" territory, I'll ad my two cents:

A lightly armored fighter works just fine in 3.x. A strength-free fighter who doesn't use sneak attack, on the other hand, does not.

Core D&D 3.5 actually has five armor types that are potentially optimal for martial characters and two more that come close enough to be competitive through the first ten to fifteen levels:
Mithral fullplate--good for a heavily armored fighter who wants the highest armor class the game has to offer to a non-dex monkey who doesn't put extraordinary effort into class-based or magical defenses.

Adamantine fullplate--DR 3/- is actually a lot closer to the effectiveness of 2 points of AC than a lot of people realize. And it also comes with a substantial savings in attribute points, gold, and item slots since an adamantine fullplate wearer can max his AC with a 12 dex and spend the ability points somewhere else or buy cheaper gloves of dexterity, or, if he has a 12 dex naturally, eschew gloves of dexterity altogether.

mithral breastplate--A tie for the best light armor. One point of armor check doesn't hurt too much and only needing a 20 dex to max it out enables either a lower starting dex or a lower gold investment than the mithral chain shirt.

mithral chain shirt--a tie for the best light armor. A 22 dex is required to max it out though so some characters will prefer the mithral breastplate--especially at the levels where dex enhancing items are a lot pricier than the approximately 4000gp difference between the armors.

Celestial Armor is also worth mentioning for lightly armored fighters but is only worth it for real dex monkeys.

Ordinary fullplate is and, to a lesser degree, ordinary chain shirts, however are competitive with the more exotic armors at least for warrior types and at least until level 10+ or so. A cleric, paladin, or fighter with a 10 base dex, for instance is far better off spending his 10,000gp on +3 fullplate than mithral fullplate than ordinary mithral fullplate. Said character doesn't have enough dex to benefit from the higher max dex of the mithral fullplate and buying gloves of dex to get him there is not an efficient use of his resources. (Mithral fullplate and +4 gloves of dex=more money and lower armor class than ordinary +5 fullplate). Likewise, any lightly armored warrior without an 18+ dex doesn't really benefit very much from wearing a mithral chain shirt over an ordinary one. At levels 1-10, that's a lot of lightly armored warriors.

The important thing to realize, however, is that when you're talking about the attainable armor class, for a lightly armored character or a heavily armored character, there is only a one point difference.
Mithral fullplate: +8 armor, +3 dex=+11 AC
Mithral breastplate: +5 armor, +5 dex=+10 AC
Mithral chain shirt: +4 armor, +6 dex=+10AC

When you take into account the fact that a lot of characters don't max out the dex bonus of their amor, you're still only talking one or two points of armor class difference since the mithral fullplate guy will often not max his max dex out either.

(Oddly it also works this way at lower levels with ordinary armors:
fullplate=+8 armor, +1 dex=+9 AC
chain shirt=+4 armor, +4 dex=+8 AC
though the difference will be a little more pronounced since it is easy for a lot of characters to max the dex bonus of ordinary fullplate but lightly armored fighters will typically only have 3 points of dex or so.

So, defensively, light armor is not really very much worse than heavy armor. It is worse, but not so much worse as to render it a suboptimal choice if other considerations (movement, evasion, etc) argue for it. The heavy armor/light armor discussion is certainly not resolved in favor of heavy armor in 3rd edition games.

Offensively, is where it is important to distinguish between a lightly armored fighter type and a dex-based fighter type. A lightly amored fighter will probably have a slightly lower strength than the heavily armored one--all other things being equal. But it doesn't need to be crippling. The difference between a 16 strength and an 18 strength is noticable but it's the difference between effective and super-effective rather than between being awesome and being pathetic. If the lightly armored character advances strength with magic and/or ability points and possibly exploits other kinds of damage (divine might for a paladin or multiclass for example) the lightly armored character can be in the zone offensively with the heavily armored character.

In 3.x, it's the character without sneak attack who tries to accomplish all that without strength that doesn't generally work out.

Exactly. I've been responding all along to the assertion that 3.5 only supports heavy-armored fighters. It is my point of view that light-armored fighters also work pretty well, largely due to Spring Attack. You don't NEED to add rogue levels to make the light-armored fighter a viable alternative to the heavy-armored fighter -- but fighter vs. fighter was the initial point of comparison.

Then you brought the rogue in as a point of comparison: "Sure, his [the rogue's] hp and bab are weaker, but his sneak attack deals Sooo much more damage than any light-armor fighter build can. He's great at hit-n-runs, twf, and archery (depending on your mood)" (emphasis added)
Not the swashbuckler. ANY light-armor fighter build. Those were your words. And, as an archer, the fighter remains better than the rogue because of his better BAB, longbow proficiency, and higher Str.

Back to Ftr-vs-Ftr. The SA fighter has several advantages over the HA fighter. His greater mobility makes it easier to come to the aid of an ally, to move the enemy around the battlefield, and to deal with enemies with reach or with enemies who have a greater number of attacks than he does (such as TWF opponents). His touch AC is a bit higher (and that is a big deal). He's also got some disadvantages. If he needs to, he can stand still and full-attack, but his AC won't be as good (and his HP might not be as good either, since he put more points into Dex).

 

[Remathilis]

Then you brought the rogue in as a point of comparison: "Sure, his [the rogue's] hp and bab are weaker, but his sneak attack deals Sooo much more damage than any light-armor fighter build can. He's great at hit-n-runs, twf, and archery (depending on your mood)" (emphasis added)
Not the swashbuckler. ANY light-armor fighter build. Those were your words. And, as an archer, the fighter remains better than the rogue because of his better BAB, longbow proficiency, and higher Str.

Semantics game. I already conceded we mixed signals on the definition of an LAF. Apples to oranges.

The big issue here is 2-handed power attack vs. sneak attack. The former is easily abusive in a one-attack scenario like spring attack (and looks much worse when employing multiple attacks) and has the dubious honor of a.) being static vs. random damage and b.) doubling on a crit. Both of those flaws (or features) make the spring-attacking-lightly-armored-greatsword-wielder more of a rules-glitch than an intended consequence (going back to 3.0 when PA was strictly 1:1, the numbers don't favor the LA so much)

I could still maintain the rogue has an edge in twf and archery (assuming proper builds and feats not in core) but I'll leave that math to someone else. Suffice to say I'm more happy about rogue's becoming the de-facto Lightly-armed & armored combatant in 4e and giving fighters the plate-and-tank role.

 

[fnwc]

Pretending that all sneak attack is backstab-style, "throat slitting" is silly. It can also represent feints (explicitly) and such. Besides, we don't know how it's going to work out in 4E; we don't know if rogues, as strikers, will require flankers or a separate feinting mechanic to work their damagelicious mojo.

AFAIK, flanking is no longer required, so I don't think the term 'backstab' will apply anymore. Now a rogue will need something called 'combat advantage' to be able to sneak attack, which is apparently easier to achieve than flanking. I believe that combat advantage can be reached without the help of another ally.

Also, immunities are largely going away, and this includes sneak attack immunity. Apparently in 4th a rogue will be able to sneak attack most Golems, Undead, etc. This blow seems more of a 'hit the monster in a vulnerable spot' rather than a 'hit the monster while he's not looking' type of action.

I'm not sure it's called sneak attack anymore.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

AFAIK, flanking is no longer required, so I don't think the term 'backstab' will apply anymore. Now a rogue will need something called 'combat advantage' to be able to sneak attack, which is apparently easier to achieve than flanking. I believe that combat advantage can be reached without the help of another ally.

Also, immunities are largely going away, and this includes sneak attack immunity. Apparently in 4th a rogue will be able to sneak attack most Golems, Undead, etc. This blow seems more of a 'hit the monster in a vulnerable spot' rather than a 'hit the monster while he's not looking' type of action.

I'm not sure it's called sneak attack anymore.

I think Combat Advantage is just a term to describe something that was covered under multiple terms in 3.x. Flat-Footed, Flanked and so on. It might still cover a little bit more than the standard 3.x conditions that allow you to sneak attack.