Kill the fighter

[Stormonu]

And what did Pathfinder find exactly? I admit I only skimmed the fighter entry just now, but it looks to me like 'armour specialization' and 'weapon specialization' and 'bravery' are all the improvements he got. There's no sign of any 'alternatives' to choose between.

There are also tweaks in the actual feat chains the fighter has access to. Primarily in 3E, feat chains pretty much petered out at about 6th level. There's a bit more base variety for "combat tricks" and the chains now top out about 13th or so. One downside is that most non-fighters can still qualify for most of these feats, but the fighter will certainly be getting to them sooner.

Not big tweaks, but from what I've been playing with my group so far, the fighter is doing well - hard to hit and killing things fast. In our last game, the 5th level fighter handily took out a CR 7 ghoul cow (yes, ghoul cow) by his lonesome (and easily) in about 2 rounds of combat.

 

[Lanefan]

Good grief Lanefan. You've had 1000+ fighters in 30 years of gaming? Holy crap. How often are you smoking PC's? I doubt that I've seen 1000 characters in 30 years of gaming.

Not all those characters come from my own campaigns. I keep stats for our whole gaming crew and have done for ages.

That said, any campaign with a lifespan measured in years tends to generate around 10-20 new characters per year*, due to any and all of: new players, temporary party NPCs, attrition, PC retirement, player boredom with current PCs, etc. Multiply that by 10 years and you're looking at 100-200 characters. Start multiplying that by the number of campaigns we've run and it adds up. Throw in the various one-offs and failed campaigns, each of which tend to be good for about 6-12 characters each, and they really add up.

* - often somewhat more in the first year

Lanefan

 

[Zustiur]

But if you force melee classes to be "realistic" while the casters can break physics on a whim, the game will always be broken. Low levels, sure, be realistic. But there should be a certain point (~level 6 in 3E is the generally agreed point) where everyone, even fighter, transcends that limit and reaches a point where they've surpassed the limits of what a real life human could do. If you don't accept that, the only other way to balance things is to massively pare down what magic can do, even 9th level spells. "Basic" things like creating a fortress out of nothing, teleporting, flying for any significant length of time... would either need to be removed completely or put at such ridiculously high levels that they would almost never actually see play. Which I certainly don't want to see. People that want gritty "realistic" D&D should just stick to low levels, E6, or something like that and leave the folks who want high fantasy / anime / wuxia alone.

I'm quite tempted by the idea of spreading the spells out over a wider period. 1E-3E hit 9th level spells at around 17-18th level. Yet 9th level spells could readily be considered 'epic' in their output. Why not shift them into epic levels? Spread the 9 spell levels over 30 or perhaps even 40 class levels.
E6 might even stretch as far as level 12 then

There are also tweaks in the actual feat chains the fighter has access to.

Fair enough.

In our last game, the 5th level fighter handily took out a CR 7 ghoul cow (yes, ghoul cow) by his lonesome (and easily) in about 2 rounds of combat.

Ghoul cow?!?!?! That's awesome.
Consider it YOINKed!

 

[Matthias]

I'm quite tempted by the idea of spreading the spells out over a wider period. 1E-3E hit 9th level spells at around 17-18th level. Yet 9th level spells could readily be considered 'epic' in their output. Why not shift them into epic levels? Spread the 9 spell levels over 30 or perhaps even 40 class levels.
E6 might even stretch as far as level 12 then

The only 10th+ spells from PFCR I can picture are Wish & Miracle. Everything else should stop at 9th.

 

[Sunseeker]

The only 10th+ spells from PFCR I can picture are Wish & Miracle. Everything else should stop at 9th.

I think he was referring to spreading out spell levels. IE: by 15th level you'd only have 5th level spells. All the really epic SOD, 32d6, ect.. stuff would be purely at lvl20 or put into epic tier.

 

[CleverNickName]

So here is my suggestion: Remove the generic version of the Fighter, and in its place adopt a few more Fighter-like martial classes to fill the niches that the generic Fighter could fill better than the other Fighter-like classes could. A class that relies on heavy armor and heavy shields, or one that fights on horseback like a Cavalier, etc.

No thanks...I would rather have the exact opposite. KEEP the one generic fighter class, and get rid of the glut of sub-classes. Instead, give us a collection of talent trees to let us build the character we want to play.

Barbarian: fighter using the "primal" talent tree.
Monk: fighter using the "unarmed" tree.
Ranger: fighter using the "hunter" tree.
Cavalier: fighter using the "mounted warrior" tree.
Musketeer: fighter using the "agile gunman" tree.
Psi Warrior: fighter using the "psionics" tree.
...and so on.

D&D has never needed more than 5 classes, IMO.

 

[Matthias]

No thanks...I would rather have the exact opposite. KEEP the one generic fighter class, and get rid of the glut of sub-classes. Instead, give us a collection of talent trees to let us build the character we want to play.

Barbarian: fighter using the "primal" talent tree.
Monk: fighter using the "unarmed" tree.
Ranger: fighter using the "hunter" tree.
Cavalier: fighter using the "mounted warrior" tree.
Musketeer: fighter using the "agile gunman" tree.
Psi Warrior: fighter using the "psionics" tree.
...and so on.

D&D has never needed more than 5 classes, IMO.

After reading this thread, I can say I'd go either way. All generics with talent trees or whatever you want to call them, or else all specialized classes without a generic Fighter (or generic anything else).

 

[Lanefan]

My apologies, I found a major mistake in my stats as listed in post 92 this thread - while we've still had more Fighters played than any other class, the numbers are nowhere near as overwhelming as first posted. See edit in that post for actual numbers.

Lan-"needs more statistician training, it seems"-efan

 

[Hautamaki]

I think that at it's core, D&D really only needs 3 classes. All other classes are really just a combination of those 3.

1) the Fighter/Martial class. This is a guy that doesn't use magic, but has a great non-magical skillset at his disposal. The martial class includes options that allow you to customize him as any of the nonmagical classes; the feat heavy 3e fighter, the straightforward but powerful 2e fighter, the rogue (sac combat ability for skills), the barbarian, the warlord, the monk, and so on

2) the divine/cleric class. On its own, this class can be customizable along different trees depending upon which deity you want to worship. Nature type deities would make you more of a druid, while other deities make you more of a priest. For more of a cleric or paladin feel you combine this class with a few levels of fighter. A nature deity combined with fighter levels makes the ranger class.

3) the arcane/wizard class. This class is customizable depending upon what school/lore of magic you want to specialize in, or if you want to be more of a generalist. Combined with a fighter you have all of the arcane warrior type classes like spellsword etc, and combined with a cleric you have a sort of sage, arcane/divine combo classes.

The three classes can also combine in many different ways. A roguish fighter with a night deity cleric with a lore of darkness mage creates an awesome ninja for example.

To me allowing players to mix and match exactly as they please gives them the best chance to create exactly the character they want; and also is the best way to recreate fantasy heroes from novels. You can further deepen the system by creating a prestige class level with a certain special ability. For example the Ninja above could be a prestige class level you can take after you have 1 level each of fighter, night deity cleric, and lore of darkness mage, which gives you a death-attack special ability or something along those lines.

It can be more difficult to balance though, which is a legitimate concern.

 

[Sunseeker]

I think that at it's core, D&D really only needs 3 classes. All other classes are really just a combination of those 3.

1) the Fighter/Martial class. This is a guy that doesn't use magic, but has a great non-magical skillset at his disposal. The martial class includes options that allow you to customize him as any of the nonmagical classes; the feat heavy 3e fighter, the straightforward but powerful 2e fighter, the rogue (sac combat ability for skills), the barbarian, the warlord, the monk, and so on

2) the divine/cleric class. On its own, this class can be customizable along different trees depending upon which deity you want to worship. Nature type deities would make you more of a druid, while other deities make you more of a priest. For more of a cleric or paladin feel you combine this class with a few levels of fighter. A nature deity combined with fighter levels makes the ranger class.

3) the arcane/wizard class. This class is customizable depending upon what school/lore of magic you want to specialize in, or if you want to be more of a generalist. Combined with a fighter you have all of the arcane warrior type classes like spellsword etc, and combined with a cleric you have a sort of sage, arcane/divine combo classes.

The three classes can also combine in many different ways. A roguish fighter with a night deity cleric with a lore of darkness mage creates an awesome ninja for example.

To me allowing players to mix and match exactly as they please gives them the best chance to create exactly the character they want; and also is the best way to recreate fantasy heroes from novels. You can further deepen the system by creating a prestige class level with a certain special ability. For example the Ninja above could be a prestige class level you can take after you have 1 level each of fighter, night deity cleric, and lore of darkness mage, which gives you a death-attack special ability or something along those lines.

It can be more difficult to balance though, which is a legitimate concern.

It reminds me a lot of the design of Champions Online. You could mix and match just about anything you wanted. Gaining greater powers of a particular type only relied on greater investment within that power-category. IE: the best fighters are the ones who dig deep into the fighter tree. However, slight cross-polination was common, even to extremes it was common because it provided for very thematic(and effective) character creation. However, system mastery reigned supreme. The guys who could put together the right points here, the right powers there, were 1000000 times more powerful than anyone else.

I think the key here is to learn from 4e's "Hybrid Classing" system. Put a cap on how many classes you can take. Establish some form of loss for multiclassing as well as a gain. Taking a level in rogue after having a level in fighter may only net you half the stuff the guy who took rogue as their primary class got. The result of a fighter taking wizard levels should be different than a wizard taking fighter levels.