No love for the smart fighter?

With such a high Int, you'll want skills to invest all those points into. My suggestion would be Bluff (for feinting) and Tumble (for avoiding AoOs). Improved Feint is a wonderful feat at lower levels, and there are several new feats in the PHB II that rely on Tumbling to be effective.

I'm currently playing a swashbuckler/fighter who will be going into duelist in a couple of levels. He also has an 18 Int. Bonus to hit, bonus to damage, a ton of skills...it's great. And he kicks much behind in combat as well.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

I think he said he won't multiclass. Several times.

I'd go Ranger. They get full BAB, lots of skills, and their class emphasis does not necessarily require a high Strength (14 or so would be nice, though). If you want to be front-line, go the two-weapon route and put the second-best score in CON so you live a while in melee. If you go the archery route, put your second-best score in DEX and think about going for Mobility to help get into position.
 

You want to look at classes with good skill lists so you can take advangate of Int stat.

How are you determining stats, because you are just asking for a character with MAD syndrome with is midly bad. If its point-buy, you will not be able to dedicate a lot of points to strength, dex and con.

The classes you'd want to look at: Ranger, Barbarian, Duskblade, Warblade, Swashblucker. I would suggest going a light-armored, high dex/int fighter to lessen the number of abilities you have to concentrate on (str, dex, con). If you choose to go melee, you want to pick up weapon finesse.
Ranger has a great skill list, lets you focus on twf or using the bow. You could stand from the rear with your bow and sneak around, you'd want to focus on tactics and ambushing your opponents. If you can, the urban ranger alternative from UA would be an awesome "smart warrior" type to follow up on.

The barbarian makes up for the str and con you'd be losing out on with his rage, in this case, you'd want to have more str than dex and get power attack.

I think the duskblade might be the best class for you, next to the Swashbuckler. You can get many of the skills that normally only wizards and bards have access to (all knowledges) and cast a small number of spells in combat. A very learned type of warrior who brandishes arcane magic to defeat his foes. When playing this character, it would be a toss up between str or dex.

Warblade's pretty cool, I have a player in my game using the class and there's a lot of white-raven manuevers you'd want to look at. They let you augment the party's fighting abilities and perform extra actions, it has a lot of great buffs.

The swashblucker's basically the smart-metropolitian/well-traveled warrior archetype. Lightly armored, lots of dex, lots of int. I think the class is a bit rail-roaded on the different paths it could go, but I've played a few of them to like the class.

Edit: Depending on where you're playing, you might want to consider the changling race from Eberron. It has the ability to disguish itself at will so long as its humanoid and medium size. They also have speak language as a class skill at all times and you'd be able to spend extra skill points and speak every language in the known world. You'd also get the ability to help the party rogue out with information gathering with your disguing ability. Basically it gives you out of combat stuff to do when standard fighters don't have much to do beyond the realm of fighting.
 
Last edited:


Nonlethal Force said:
I know you said you want to play a fighter ...

but have you thought about the rogue variant in UA that swaps out sneak attack for the fighter bonus feat progression?

You'd lose out on hitpoints and a bit on BAB ... but you would benefit from that INT of yours. You could probably put things like spring attack and mobility to good use also.

Its a great variant. And if any of my players asked, I would up the hit die to d8 in exchange for 2 skill points per level and the BAB to good for another 2 skill points per level.
 
Last edited:


If you insist on literally playing a Fighter w/o multiclassing, there's the Thug variant in UA. Trade in first level feat and some armor proficiencies for 4+ Int skill points and a good skill list, possibly more, too. I need to take a look...

On the houserule side, I took the UA swap feats for sneak attack rule and gave it some more teeth:

“Gladiator” Variant
• Remove Armor Proficiency: Medium and Heavy, and Tower Shield Proficiency. Add Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Net.
• Class Skills: Bluff (Cha), Craft (Int), Escape Artist (Dex), Heal (Wis), Intimidate (Cha), Jump (Str), Listen (Wis), Perform (Weapon Drill) (Cha), Sense Motive (Wis), Slight of Hand (Dex), Spot (Wis), Tumble (Dex), and Swim (Str).
• Skill points = 4 + Int modifier
• Starting with 2nd level bonus feat, may choose to gain +1d6 Sneak Attack instead of a bonus feat at each even level (need not always be sneak attack)
• Change “good” save from Fortitude to Reflex
• 5th level – Gains Evasion. This replaces the standard fighter’s 5th level ability.
• At 11th and 17th levels, a Special Ability is gained from the Rogue Special Ability list. Alternatively, Uncanny Dodge (or Improved Uncanny Dodge if you already have the former) may be chosen. This replaces the standard Fighter’s 11th and 17th level abilities.

(I gave fighters extra class features at levels 5, 11, and 17.) It may be a bit too strong. I think the added MAD and worse "good" save makes it balanced, but you could always remove the first level bonus feat and/or reduce it to d8 hit die.
 

Squire James is right: Ranger is where it's at.

If you other scores aren't that great? No problem; you get 3 free, decent feats - whoopee! You also get awesome skill points, decent HD, good BAB, two good saves, etc. Go TWF, and get TW defende, and the combat expertise live of feats. ComAdven would likely have mroe feats useful to you, as well as PHBII

If you want less combat and more skills (just saying to say - it's worth a look), go with the Scout class. It's like a ranger/rogue combo which is far better than any multiclass combo, and seems like a blast to play.

cheers,
--N
 



Remove ads

Top