I don't want to be a druid/cleric, I want to be a fighter.

[Evenglare]

Curious on the thoughts of other people around here concerning balance, character optimization, munchkining whatever you want to call it. In 3.5 and pathfinder and all of that people say that clerics and druids can potentially make better fighters than fighters. So here's the question, if you want to be a fighter, do you pick fighter or a class that supposedly does it "better"? Of course this doesn't just apply to 3.5 and pathfinder, it's just the easiest example. Do you play the class you want and have it fit your original vision for your character (Fighter) or do you concede your original vision to something mechanically superior (Cleric or Druid)?

 

[billd91]

Do you play the class you want and have it fit your original vision for your character (Fighter) or do you concede your original vision to something mechanically superior (Cleric or Druid)?

If I want to play a fighter... I play a fighter. Mechanical superiority is unnecessary.

 

[Yora]

I believe in anything but 3rd edition with a ton of splatbooks, fighter is actually quite good. In our AD&D campaign the fighter is more lethal than the other four characters combined.

 

[Pickles JG]

I believe in anything but 3rd edition with a ton of splatbooks, fighter is actually quite good. In our AD&D campaign the fighter is more lethal than the other four characters combined.

Fighters are pretty good at low levels in 3e too, they only really seem to start gettting outclassed from 7or so onwards when a lot of people stop playing anyway.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I believe in anything but 3rd edition with a ton of splatbooks, fighter is actually quite good. In our AD&D campaign the fighter is more lethal than the other four characters combined.

In AD&D, particularly 2E, particularly with C&T, Fighters are pretty great.

In 3.XE/PF, they're actually fine until you get to about level 6 or so. They're certainly still playable until 10, at least, if you have a solid build and/or the casters aren't going all-out (and the DM provides decent magic weapons/armour for you).

Tons of splatbooks make no difference to the matter, though - everything that makes casters OP is pretty core.

As for do you stick with it, as the OP asks, well, depends how bad it is, for me. I'm rarely married to a very narrow vision of what I want to play (I would consider "has to be a specific class" very narrow), so what I usually do is, is find something that I want to play that works. If there's nothing, I don't play. I think having a really narrow mind on what you want to play is somewhat problematic in RPGs in general. I mean, can't argue with taste, but it causes issues, in my experience.

(If it's 3.5E, you could always play a Warblade and pick the non-magical paths if you wanted a Fighter who sucked less.)

PS - If you can convince the DM to drop the iterative penalties on attacks in 3.XE/PF, that goes a long way to keeping Fighters and the like "in the fight", as it were, as well as speeding up the game a great deal. Bonus points if you get him to kill off "Full Attack" as an action.

 

[Blackbrrd]

The Fighter is pretty good in my opinion, especially if the Cleric/Druid/Wizard in the party uses party buffs intead of self-buffs. In other words, I would play a Fighter if I wanted to play a melee guy. I like having a flexible character though, so I would probably end up with some weird ass class/PrC combination.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

In 3e you would have to pay me to play a fighter as anything other then a level dip.

At the end of 3.5 playing a warblade was cool, or if your DM didnt like those classes just avoide the concepts

 

[Henry]

I know there's some contention on this at the paizo forums (especially with Pathfinder Unchained announced) but I still contend the PF Fighter, from experience, is a very powerful and versatile class for front line fighting. For 3e and 3.5, a bit less so, but i've never known a Sword and Board or great-weapon fighter to be useless compared to a "CoDzilla" on the front line.

Most important thing: if your DM is allowing the party to dictate the tone of fights and when they have them at all times, allowing the cleric or druid to "nova" or prepare only the specific spells for buffing that they use, then yes, the fighter will pale compared to a high level magic user who is prepped to be a front line warrior. However, spells run out. Righteous might and enlarge person and bull strength only last for rounds or minutes, not hours. Two or three fights in, they're spent or close to it -- or if it's a surprise fight it takes them two or three rounds to get that way. A fighter's feats usually have a casting time of a free action.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

As a DM, this was (obviously) a huge issue in our 3.xE games so I worked with the players to manage it.

I did this with a combination of custom magic items to allow classes like the fighter a bit more flexibility, using anti-magic and dead magic quite a bit (not as a specific "screw you" but simply in the context of, inter alia, my use of beholders in Zhent-heavy campaigns), and working with the spellcasters to have them buff the fighters and monks rather than themselves. I was fortunate that many of my players who favoured spellcaster realised they also had to play a part in keeping it fun for everyone.

Now that I run 4E, obviously I simply don't think about it anymore!

If I was going to run 3.xE again, I would remove the penalty on iterative attacks, allow a full attack as a standard action, and also make all base saves equal to half class level with a bonus of +2 for those save categories where the save used the good progression (but that +2 does not stack with multiclassing). Actually, after looking at 5E, I could probably just replace the +2 with advantage.

 

[Crothian]

I would play a fighter. I think the idea of the cleric being a better fighter fine in theory but in practice we never say it happen.