Giving the fighter some love

[PhantomNarrator]

I'm in the process of considering some house rules for my next D&D game, and I think the fighter needs a little something extra to level the playing field with the spellcasters. I don't want to do anything too radical, but I'm currently running Hackmaster and I'm rather fond of the "exploding die" rule. Basically, if you roll the maximum on the damage die of a weapon, you get to roll again and add that roll minus 1 to the total, continuing the process until you finally roll less than the maximum possible roll for that die.

I figure this is a simple but significant class feature that might bring some of the shine back to the fighters.

Is this a bad idea? Should I make it a feat with a specific weapon perhaps? Any thoughts out there?

 

[Nifft]

It's a bad idea because it rewards weapons disproportionately. A falchion becomes super-awesome, for example, while a bastard sword remains about the same.

If all weapons used the same die type, it would be fine.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Arkhandus]

Your fighters would really, really learn to love the scythe, falchion, and mercurial greatsword in ways no man should ever love an inanimate object, or other non-living, non-woman entity.

*player crits with scythe*
*player is rolling dice*
*still rolling*
*pit fiend is cut in twain so violently that it explodes in a 30-foot burst of unholy ichor*
*dm sighs and says "guess we don't need to roll initiative after all"

.....yeah, I over-react a little, but still.

 

[Nifft]

in ways no man should ever love [a] non-living, non-woman entity.

... but a non-living woman entity would be kosher?

Cheers, -- N

 

[awayfarer]

For my Eberron game, I just gave fighters all of their fighter-only feats (plus a couple of others) and at a slightly advanced progression. Makes sense to me given that they're feats that only* fighters can take anyway. I feel like not allowing the fighters access to the weapon specialiization chain is roughly equivalent to making barbarians spend feats to get their rage goodies.

*Yes yes, I know about the Warblade but close enough.

 

[robberbaron]

There is some difference between giving the fighter some love and having his babies.

What are you going to do when the spellcaster tires of seeing the fighter cut large chunks out of the BBEGs and complains that he is too weak? Give him some love, too?

IMO it is a bad idea. If fighters were so weak the rules would have been written differently.
If you must, give them an extra feat.

 

[Engilbrand]

I advocate sticking with the exploding die idea. No matter how many dice get rolled for the weapon damage, only 1 may be rerolled. It doesn't matter if 2d4 comes up with 2 4s. Only one of them would get rerolled. I would actually make it so that the total of these rerolls can't be more than the character's level in Fighter times 2. At higher levels, have a feat that allows them to reroll a reroll once per encounter.
First level Fighter rolls an 8 for his longsword. He rolls a 6 on the d8, but he can only add 2 because he has one fighter level. Final weapon damage is 10, then you add bonuses.
At level 12, he takes "Lucky Explosion". He's rolling his d8 and get 2 8s and a 2. Of the 24 points that he could get, he only got 18. He uses his once per encounter reroll from "Lucky Explosion" and rerolls the 2. He gets a 5, so his total bonus is a 21. Final straight weapon damage is 29, then you add bonuses. That would be nice on a crit.
While I don't necessarily think that the Fighter needs to be improved like this, I don't really believe in telling people that it's going to break the game and be horrible or whatever else people mumble about. You have a good idea. Go with it.

 

[PhantomNarrator]

Your fighters would really, really learn to love the scythe, falchion, and mercurial greatsword in ways no man should ever love an inanimate object, or other non-living, non-woman entity.

*player crits with scythe*
*player is rolling dice*
*still rolling*
*pit fiend is cut in twain so violently that it explodes in a 30-foot burst of unholy ichor*
*dm sighs and says "guess we don't need to roll initiative after all"

.....yeah, I over-react a little, but still.

There are two simple ways of fixing that problem. The first would be to change all the 2d4 damage to 1d8 - not my preferred method, but statistically it wouldn't mean that much difference.

My preferred option would be to stipulate that you must roll the MAXIMUM damage to benefit from an exploding di(c)e - hence just rolling a 4 on one of those dice doesn't cut it, you would need to roll two 4's.

Otherwise, I don't see the argument about not doing it because some weapons are better than others - that's always been the case, hasn't it? Why would anyone waste a feat on a bastard sword, for example, when a long sword or great sword is optimal? The answer would be role-play, right? I don't see the disproportionate effectiveness of weapons as a major issue, especially if I use the latter option. It hasn't been a problem in the Hackmaster game, at any rate. In fact, explosions seem to add a lot of excitement to the game. But your points are well taken. Anyone else have an opinion on the matter?

I advocate sticking with the exploding die idea. No matter how many dice get rolled for the weapon damage, only 1 may be rerolled. It doesn't matter if 2d4 comes up with 2 4s. Only one of them would get rerolled. I would actually make it so that the total of these rerolls can't be more than the character's level in Fighter times 2. At higher levels, have a feat that allows them to reroll a reroll once per encounter.

Now this is an interesting idea. It doesn't benefit or penalize multi-dice weapons. I initially figured my option was fair because most if not all of the 2d4 weapons have such devastating crit multipliers it wouldn't penalize them much by making them explode less often, but on reflection your option might be better in play. Or what if instead of capping damage at x2 level, make the -1 to the exploding die cumulative, so that d4 weapons have less potential max damage than d8 weapons?

 

[Arkhandus]

... but a non-living woman entity would be kosher?

Cheers, -- N

....I thought I covered that as a non-option.....curse the English language! I can't say what I mean and not have it confused!

 

[Nifft]

....I thought I covered that as a non-option.....curse the English language! I can't say what I mean and not have it confused!

It's not really the fault of English... an intarweeb snark can snark in any language.

But yeah, there's a reason those lawyer folks get paid a lot. Language is tricky stuff. Even Common!

Cheers, -- N