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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9880475" data-attributes="member: 4937">Fighter in my opinion is slightly stronger than Ranger up to about 225,000 XP where the spell use of the Ranger and the extra HD and favorably leveling at mid-levels pulls the Ranger ahead.  At low levels, the Fighter's extra weapon proficiency slot, D10 HD, and ability to hire men-at-arms and hirelings tends to push the fighter into a better place.  In particular, the Fighter can double specialize or specialize in a bow while still being proficient with another weapon, something a Ranger can't do - so invariably at lower levels the ranger is taking that -2 penalty to hit regularly.  The Fighter also has a faster progression in attacks per round, so again, considerable advantage when having to switch to melee weapon if ranged focused, or missile weapon if melee focused.  At lower levels, really the Ranger's only substantial benefit is the bonus to damage versus certain common foes. Paladin pre-UA is mostly just a better fighter that is the ideal solo class (tanky and self-healing).  Post UA it's a rather weak class if it isn't folded into the Cavalier, but if it is made a subclass of Cavalier then it's just an uber-class that holds its own at low levels while having the most powerful endgame.  You can't specialize but you get superior advancement on attacks per round, bonuses to hit, and so forth that keep pace with Fighters.  I haven't done the math to exactly compare but its at least comparable to a double specialized fighter at most XP values.  Late game, you have the huge advantage that you can easily attain 18/00 strength even if you didn't roll it, you have decent spell use to recover hit points and buff, and if you ever find a Holy Avenger you just turn into a one man army that takes down anything in a single round.Fighter/Ranger/Paladin was the triad all power gaming is built around, whatever else the party is doing.  Bard as the first PrC is worthwhile as well, because you are so freaking tanky relative to XP, and you have decent spellcasting utility and a bit of jack-of-all trades going.  It's a nice build if you don't have the strength to be a really good fighter but you can qualify as Bard.Cleric is decent, but mostly you are there to keep the meat shields/DPS stocked up on hit points and keep the nasty undead at bay so that they can take them down without risking all the bad things that happen if an undead touches you.  You simply can't produce the damage output of the fighter classes though.  You always want a Cleric in the party and D&D combat tactics revolve around protecting the cleric so the cleric can protect you, but at no point would I ever say the Cleric is the strongest class in the game.  It's too easy to get really good saves and fighters just do 4, 6 or 8 times as much damage per round.M-U is rough.  My problem with the class is that you are so squishy you're always one round away from instant death.  You never level up to the point you can mitigate against bad luck.  In 40+ years of GMing, I've never seen a single classed M-U survive my games.  But having one in the party as a problem solver is still really useful.  Typically it requires an extreme amount of gaming the rules to get one that can stay alive, either by multi-classing or dual classing as something with more hit points before switching to the M-U.  That's true even of 3e with its linear multiclassing, even with spellcasting being significantly easier and more powerful in RAW 3e.  The single classed Wizards just die.  High level, you are like the cleric in that the strategy is to keep you alive with the powerful tanky fighter classes so you can solve problems.  (Power gaming 3e generally involves CODzilla IME.)Nothing else is really worth it, especially since you've nerfed multclassing.  I'm not sure how you'd even play an M-U in a game that challenges fighters that doesn't randomly die enough that you death spiral and fail resurrection survival checks, even if you could raise them from the dead every time.</blockquote>

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