Project Phoenix fighter discussion (Forked from: Feat Points)

[Kerrick]

For those of you just joining our program, we're discussing the Project Phoenix fighter (and other classes), which can be found here

However, most of the time a mundane class ability (by that I don't mean 'non-exciting', but rather that its a product of ordinary skill) is in fact feat equivalent and its far better to transform the base class (or at least that element of it) into bonus feats from a class feat list.

I'm not going to argue that point, because you're right. I've seen many splatbook PrCs that should really have been nothing more than a few feats or a feat chain.

You've forced them to take one of your four required feat trees. I must walk the way of the bear, cat, wolverine, or gorgon. I can mix and match, but I can't go, "You know, I want to move as quickly as I can down an archer feat tree. I'd rather get a couple of archer feats at this time than learn cat or gorgon style or whatever."

I could create an archery style, but I felt that was more the purview of the ranger.

What this will lead you to doing eventually is creating large number of fighting styles to fit every different fighter concept. How is that better than a large number of feats?

How many different concepts are there? I covered the major (most commonly chosen) ones: two-weapon, sword and board, two-hander, and unarmed. If someone wants to create a path for their obscure one-off character, they're more than welcome, but I'm not going to break my brain trying to think up every single possible fighting style in existince.

They are gaining power, and I've always argued that the fighter should gain power. But to claim that they are gaining customization is to compare apples and oranges. Your class gets more 'stuff' I grant you, and part of having more stuff is you make more choices. However, the original base class was fully customizable. It had no required class abilities at all.

So tell me... why is it that the general consensus of the 3.5 fighter is "It's not worth taking past 4th level"?

You didn't have to take 'weapon feats' (although most did).

Weapon feats are the equivalent of several Weapon Focus feats at once. Tell me again why that's a bad thing?

You weren't forced to take a particular style.

No, but again, I've added abilities for the most commonly chosen fighting styles. Instead of your tank simply taking Power Attack, Cleave, and Great Cleave just like every other tank, he can go with Oversized Weapon, Mighty Strike, and Pounding Strike, whereas his buddy Bob can take Imposing Size, Dazing Blow, and Pounding Strike. I don't see how this is bad, considering this is in addition to all those bonus feats you keep going on about (which is the third time I've said that now).

Yeah, well in 3.5 your fighter can get dodge, mobility ect. by like 2nd level (by which point a human fighter has like 5 feats), where as the rogue might not have the same list of feats until like 9th level (by which time the fighter has picked up even more feats).

Spring Attack: fighter 4, rogue 6. The fighter has a whole extra feat over the rogue at that point.

And when you get up to 9th level your 9th level fighter has a higher BAB and by 9th level 18 more hit points. So yeah, naturally the rogue gets some stuff to compensate.

Yeah. But if were building a duelist in 3.5, I'd go with 4 levels of fighter (for the Spring Attack chain and WS), then rogue, Duelist, and maybe even Weapon Master, if it were allowed. In PP, I could stick with fighter and take some stuff from Cat Style, mix it up with a few rogue levels, and get the same effect without having to take the PrC. You might argue that it's the same number of class levels, and you might be right, but it's nice for campaigns that don't allow PrCs, or for players who want to keep the number of classes to a manageable number.

It's the same freaking thing just with more 'stuff'. Are you trying to convince me that 3.X fighters are weak compared to 3.X rogues?*

Hadn't thought of that, but the 3.5 fighter is weaker. My fighter is definitely stronger, however.

Are you trying to convince me that if you wanted to build a combatant the rogue outshown the fighter?

I was trying to say that if I wanted to build a duelist, I would be stupid not to include rogue levels, given that a rogue's sneak attack is vastly superior to the piddling feats a fighter gets. I'm not going to say that a rogue vs. a fighter with the same build will be superior; at L20, the fighter will have one more attack (assuming a single weapon), +5 BAB, many more hit points, and several more feats. The rogue, OTOH, will have 8d6 sneak attack, several special abilities, improved uncanny dodge, and evasion. Sure, the fighter will wipe the floor with the rogue in a straight-up fight, but that's what he's supposed to do. He's a fighter. Fighters fight - we agreed on that point. A rogue's schtick is guerrilla warfare - striker, hit and run tactics. That's where his abilities shine: sneak attack, evasion, opportunist, etc. Put the rogue against the fighter in a shadowed maze, and I'd put even money on either of them winning.

That's my point. Any class ability that can be reduced to a feat should be reduced to a feat.

That means at least 75% of class abilities would be feats, and most classes would get nothing BUT feats. You can't be serious.

I believe that a class is just a schtick and that all that is needed for coolness is to do that schtick better than any other class.

Hey, we agree on something! That's what my intent was - to make the fighter (and every other class) more focused at what it does, and better at it, than anyone else. Tell me: do you think a PP fighter could best any member of any other class in one-on-one combat? If the answer is yes, then I've accomplished my goal.

If in theory some other class can learn part of the 'cat style', it's nothing from me because they can never be as cool or as masterful in their fighting style as the fighter.

Exactly! But if you turn it into a feat chain, anyone can learn it and it ceases to be special.

No, it's not. Besides which, if that's your goal, you flunked it. Of the six abilities of the bear style, only 1 involves doing cool stuff besides hit things, and 3 of the six simply directly increase damage.

First off, there are eight abilities, not six, and second, I see four that do cool stuff: Imposing Size, Oversized Weapon, Pounding Strike, and Stunning Blow. Sure, they do stuff in addition to hitting things, but again, that's the fighter's schtick: hitting things. The Bear Style is about hitting things hard.

Of the six abilities of the cat style, none of them involve doing cool stuff besides hitting things and 5 of the 6 are literally about hitting things.
*sigh* Again, eight abilities. And Sudden Attack isn't about hitting things. And the whole purpose of the Cat Style is to hit things quickly. Which, I think we can agree, I accomplished.

And some of them are ridiculous in there, "Need to hit things better/harder." desparation, as if that solves anything. ("I can make 5, no 6, no 9, no 52 attacks per round!")*

Show me the build where you can get 52 attacks per round. Seriously - if you can find a rules exploit like that, I need to fix it.

Of the six abilities of the gorgon style, only two let him do cool things in combat besides hitting things and even this 'defensive style' is majority hitting things better.

Eight abilities, and half of them don't involve hitting things. I deliberately designed this one with two paths - defensive and offensive - because some people like to use shields as weapons. Obviously you don't, but YMMV.

And again, the real problem with a fighter isn't there ability to do cool stuff besides hitting things. The real problem with a fighter is inability to deal with obstacles and dealing with magic.

Now we're getting to the meat of the argument. This can be accomplished with feats, really - Iron Will (or any other feat that improves the Will save), or Lightning Reflexes or a feat that enables using Con for Reflex saves (not a bad idea, that), etc. - their poor saves are the main reason they're weak against magic, but then, they should have a weakness somewhere; if they didn't, they'd be overpowered. Mages are one of the best classes in the game, power-wise, but even an archmage is squishy without his protections.

As for obstacles... I'm assuming you mean things like traps, which is the rogue's schtick. Mundane obstacles like doors and rockfalls, the fighter can either bash through them or use his strength to move them.

**Apparantly so, since the PP fighter gains between 10 and 14 new feat equivalent abilities compared to 3.X, but the PP rogue actually appears to have gotten weaker.

The rogue might be a little weaker - I nerfed evasion and imp evasion and reduced their skill points slightly, but they're otherwise unchanged. They could use more special ability choices...

 

[Celebrim]

So tell me... why is it that the general consensus of the 3.5 fighter is "It's not worth taking past 4th level"?

Two reasons. The first is that the fighter can't compete with spell casters on equal terms after somewhere between 9th and 12th level because spell casters increase in power exponentially and the fighter increases in power linerally (by comparison at least). More importantly though, because rather than addressing the problem with the base class fighter, it was much easier (and much more tempting financially) for WotC and 3rd party publishers to address it by providing an endless variaty of PrC's which had both full BAB progression AND which recieved 'feat equivalent abilities' at better than the standard set by base fighters 1 bonus feat per 2 levels. If you are get the equivalent of a feat every level instead of every two levels, and you don't give up anything compared to a fighter (often you'd have better skill lists, more skills per level, and even better saves as well as more 'feat equivalent abilities) then it makes no sense to take fighter past 2nd or 4th level (the optimal break points in terms of efficiency) or at most whatever the first level is that you can qualify for the PrC.

Weapon feats are the equivalent of several Weapon Focus feats at once. Tell me again why that's a bad thing?

It's not a bad thing, it's just indicating that you think Weapon Focus is a weak feat and/or that the concept of weapon groups needs to be defined in the base rules. And, you are probably right in that. I see no reason to justify that being a class ability exclusive to fighters though.

No, but again, I've added abilities for the most commonly chosen fighting styles. Instead of your tank simply taking Power Attack, Cleave, and Great Cleave just like every other tank, he can go with Oversized Weapon, Mighty Strike, and Pounding Strike, whereas his buddy Bob can take Imposing Size, Dazing Blow, and Pounding Strike. I don't see how this is bad, considering this is in addition to all those bonus feats you keep going on about (which is the third time I've said that now).

I don't see how that is bad either. I just don't see how that justifies Oversized Weapon (Monkey Grip, BTW, it's already a feat), Mighty Strike, and Pounding strike being class abilities rather than feats. If they were feats, Bob can still take Imposing Size, Dazing Blow, and Pounding Strike, and Bill can take Oversized Weapon, Mighty Strike, and Pounding strike instead of (and/or in addition to Cleave and Great Cleave) so you gain nothing by making them class abilities. All you are really arguing for in my opinion is the need for larger and more robust feat trees, which I agree with.

Yeah. But if were building a duelist in 3.5, I'd go with 4 levels of fighter (for the Spring Attack chain and WS), then rogue, Duelist, and maybe even Weapon Master, if it were allowed.

I'm not sure I understand your point. Duelist seems to be another one of those PrCs that could be mostly turned into a set of feats and which obseletes the fighter by providing one feat equivalent power (or very nearly) per level, and for that matter I never like the core concept behind a Duelist any way, which seems to be at its heart, "I want to wear light armor and get all the benefits of doing that, but I don't want to have a lowered AC as a result."

In PP, I could stick with fighter and take some stuff from Cat Style, mix it up with a few rogue levels, and get the same effect without having to take the PrC.

Bravo. I approve. Or even better, you could make the stuff from Cat Style as feats, mix it up with a few rogue levels, and get the same effect without having the PrC. What are you gaining by not making them feats? All you are saying is, "I need to add 40 or so feats that are exclusive to fighters AND I need to tell fighters when they have to take them." Why on both counts?

Hadn't thought of that, but the 3.5 fighter is weaker.

I disagree. Just as Fighter was considered a dip class for valid reasons, Rogue was widely considered a 3 or 6 level dip class that just couldn't cut it at higher levels. Many people who played published adventure paths noted the complete uselessness of their rogue past about level 10, as it didn't have enough BAB to consistantly over come high level monsters AC, frequently found itself unable to do more than 5 or 10 damage per round vs. things immune to sneak attack, had a hit point shortage, and it had almost all the deficiencies of a fighter when it came to spells. Plus its skills were completely obseleted by high level magic.

My fighter is definitely stronger, however.

Well obviously, it gets 10 more feats than the 3.X version which was already stronger than Rogues anyway.

I was trying to say that if I wanted to build a duelist, I would be stupid not to include rogue levels, given that a rogue's sneak attack is vastly superior to the piddling feats a fighter gets. I'm not going to say that a rogue vs. a fighter with the same build will be superior; at L20, the fighter will have one more attack (assuming a single weapon), +5 BAB, many more hit points, and several more feats. The rogue, OTOH, will have 8d6 sneak attack, several special abilities, improved uncanny dodge, and evasion. Sure, the fighter will wipe the floor with the rogue in a straight-up fight...[/

Irony. Sneak attack has very limited utility at high levels as a greater and greater percentage of foes tend to be immune to it. Faced with a series of encounters with undead, oozes, constructs, etc, the rogue is left as a little more than a bystander and even moderately successful high level rogue construction generally involved splashing fighter for those 'piddly feats', moving into a full BAB progression class at some point, and maximizing UMD so you could use a wand backup if sneak attack failed.

Put the rogue against the fighter in a shadowed maze, and I'd put even money on either of them winning.

Never mind that according to the rules as written, if the maze is shadowy (and hense provides concealment), that everything in it including the fighter is thereby immune to sneak attack. That however has to be one of the most widely ignored rules in 3.X.

That means at least 75% of class abilities would be feats, and most classes would get nothing BUT feats. You can't be serious.

I can't? Why not? I fail to see the problem with this.

Tell me: do you think a PP fighter could best any member of any other class in one-on-one combat? If the answer is yes, then I've accomplished my goal.

No, it goes down hard to CoDzilla or a Druid. However, that's a different problem, and its pretty much worth noting that the 3.X fighter could - baring abuse of shapechanging/class changing spells by a spellcaster, Bo9S munchkins, and certain broken PrCs - best any member of any other class in one-on-one combat as well.

Exactly! But if you turn it into a feat chain, anyone can learn it and it ceases to be special.

Why?

First off, there are eight abilities, not six...

Oh, I stand corrected. A greater percentage of the feats are just about hitting stuff than I thought.

I see four that do cool stuff: Imposing Size

That's the one, and it's pretty weak at that.

Oversized Weapon...

No, that just lets you hit things with a bigger weapon. It doesn't let you do something cool besides hitting stuff.

Pounding Strike

Nope, that just hits stuff harder. It doesn't let you do something cool besides hitting stuff.

Stunning Blow

Nope, that just hits stuff harder and the ability to hit stuff isn't the problem with the fighter.

Show me the build where you can get 52 attacks per round. Seriously - if you can find a rules exploit like that, I need to fix it.

Hmmm.. I could be misreading your intent here, but here goes.

Two-handed weapon style with 4 attacks per round, and the standard two-weapon fighting feat progression (bringing it to 7). Now, take Cat Style - Rapid Strike, Greater Blinding Strike - and use both. The conservative interpretation of your rules (that I'm now guessing you intended) is that this grants you 16+ attacks in a round which is already pretty insane. However, when I first read this:

"the fighter can take a combat stride and make a full round of melee attacks against any target in reach.

I interpreted 'any' to mean that that you attacked every target in reach, which easily gets us up over 50 attacks per round if your standard attack progression is 8 attacks, not even adding in cleaves and the like on your second time through your full attack progression.

their poor saves are the main reason they're weak against magic

Errr... wrong, but we'll leave that aside for the moment.

As for obstacles... I'm assuming you mean things like traps, which is the rogue's schtick. Mundane obstacles like doors and rockfalls, the fighter can either bash through them or use his strength to move them.

This the kind of thing that you say that makes me think you've got even less experience with high level play than I do. Mundane obstacles like traps, doors, and rockfalls can be easily handled by the fighter. That's no problem. By obstacles I mean things like invisibility, flight, high DR, forcecage, darkness, being submerged in deep water, falling, environmental hazards (smoke, heat, cold, etc.), sunder (or comparable ways to disarm the fighter), and so on and so forth ad infinitum. The problem with the fighter is that one forcecage neutralizes them entirely, but that's only the most obvious case of numerous problems that they have. You mention the squishiness of mages when deprived of their protections, but fighters are even more squishy without said protections and less able to rely on their own prowess to provide them. At high levels with RAW, the fighter is 100% dependent on spellcasters to stay 'in the game'. Without a suite of things like 'death ward', 'hero's feast', 'mindblank', 'freedom of action', etc. buffing them they go down instantly. Spellcasters can at least protect themselves, but fighter's are not only helpless, they are helpless against a wider variaty of effects. Rogues at high levels can't damage hardly anything without serious min/maxing (and depending on the target not even then), but at least they have a suite of skills to help with some hazards and evasion and slippery mind to help with others.

All your 'fixes' to the fighter leave them just as helpless at high level play. Your 16 or 52 or whatever attacks per round, and your quadrupling damage or whatever you do change nothing accept increasing their ability to beat down things in a straight fight that by high levels they'll almost never face and which in any event they were already good at before you helped them out.

The rogue might be a little weaker - I nerfed evasion and imp evasion and reduced their skill points slightly, but they're otherwise unchanged. They could use more special ability choices...

Might? Please, I'd not take a Rogue under your rules ever. It was a marginal class to begin with suited only to some campaign styles. Improved evasion doesn't need to be nerfed because evocation was never problimatic anyway, and its one of the rogues few saving graces that they have some defenses despite their lack of magical prowess and few hit points.

 

[Runestar]

I would say the key reason why a fighter is typically considered a 2-4 lv dip is primarily because feats fail to scale accordingly with higher lv spells, as well as the lack of high-powered feats which a fighter can take at higher lvs to ensure he remains on par with a spellcaster.

For instance, at lv17+, a wizard is easily gating in pyroclastic dragons, shapeshifting into god-knows-what, creating his own planes of existance and altering reality with but a thought. A fighter...looks forward to taking weapon supremacy at lv18, and this is assuming he wasted all those feats on the weapon spec tree earlier on. If he didn't, then chances are he already took all the feats worth taking by lv12, meaning that the extra feats he takes after that are essentially dead weight.

First off, there are eight abilities, not six, and second, I see four that do cool stuff: Imposing Size, Oversized Weapon, Pounding Strike, and Stunning Blow. Sure, they do stuff in addition to hitting things, but again, that's the fighter's schtick: hitting things.

Which an existing 3e fighter already has no problems doing. So I don't think making him better in something he currently excels in is going to make him more enticing to play. Past a certain point, I won't bother with augmenting his strengths. I will want to start shoring up those traditional weaknesses which made him such a turn-off to play in the first place.

I would argue that a fighter's key flaw is not that he doesn't fight well enough, but that he does not have enough options (not just options on how to fight, but options on how to deal with whatever comes his way).

In a nutshell, look at how tome of battle handled the warblade. I just feel that is everything the fighter should have been.

 

[Celebrim]

In a nutshell, look at how tome of battle handled the warblade. I just feel that is everything the fighter should have been.

Oh, great, not that again.

The problem with the warblade, other than that it goes too far, is that it stop feeling very much like a fighter. You aren't playing 'Batman' or 'John Carter, Warlord of Mars' or 'Conan' or 'Tarzan' at that point. You are playing a wizard who happens to use a sword rather than a wand.

Now, for a certain style of campaign, that's ok. If you are playing Wuxia Warriors, the Warblade is very appropriate. But otherwise, it's just another example of, "Oh heck, I can't figure out how to balance spell-casters with non-spellcasters, so lets just make them all spell-casters."

 

[Runestar]

To which I would respond that only a few maneuvers are obviously magical in nature (and they are not even warblade-centric). It is quite possible to simulate mundane fighting styles using those maneuvers.

ToB is more than just teleporting fighters throwing fireballs. I am pretty sure a warblade can be built to be indistinguishable from a fighter, flavour-wise.

 

[Kerrick]

Two reasons. The first is that the fighter can't compete with spell casters on equal terms after somewhere between 9th and 12th level because spell casters increase in power exponentially and the fighter increases in power linerally (by comparison at least).

Well, yeah. But a large part of that is the spells, which I've also adjusted (probably not far enough, but it's a start).

But Runestar hit on the real reason the fighter sucks (which I figured out last night, after some thought): There aren't enough high-level feats to support it. The highest-level feat in the PHB is Greater WS, at L12. After that, you might as well go rogue, cause there won't be a whole lot else worth taking, unless you go to epic and get PTWF (and that doesn't even have a BAB/level requirement, so it's not worth sticking in fighter to get it). I did add a ton of new feats, especially high-level ones for fighters: Blinding Speed, Damage Reduction, Improved Combat Movement, Overwhelming and Dev Crit, Indomitable, Stand Still, etc.

It's not a bad thing, it's just indicating that you think Weapon Focus is a weak feat and/or that the concept of weapon groups needs to be defined in the base rules. And, you are probably right in that. I see no reason to justify that being a class ability exclusive to fighters though.

I don't see anything wrong with opening it up to other classes either; the intent was to make fighters more attractive by giving them something that other classes don't have. It's not an ultra-powerful ability, so it's not unbalancing, but it makes them unique.

I don't see how that is bad either. I just don't see how that justifies Oversized Weapon (Monkey Grip, BTW, it's already a feat)

I know it's a feat, but it's not OGC.

...Mighty Strike, and Pounding strike being class abilities rather than feats. If they were feats, Bob can still take Imposing Size, Dazing Blow, and Pounding Strike, and Bill can take Oversized Weapon, Mighty Strike, and Pounding strike instead of (and/or in addition to Cleave and Great Cleave) so you gain nothing by making them class abilities. All you are really arguing for in my opinion is the need for larger and more robust feat trees, which I agree with.

Again, you CAN make them feats, but then we're reduced to the same problem we had before - why take them as a fighter when I could take them as a barbarian or paladin, AND gain all the cool class abilities? Sure, a fighter can get them sooner, but that's ALL he gets. A raging barbarian with two-weapon style feats will tear an equivalent-level fighter apart.

I'm not sure I understand your point. Duelist seems to be another one of those PrCs that could be mostly turned into a set of feats

Well, yes. Which is the reason I ditched it - most of its abilities were covered in the Cat Style, and the rest weren't really worthwhile. But my point was that if I were to build a "fast fighter" in 3.5, that would be the best way to go, as opposed to taking straight levels of fighter with a bunch of feats. In PP, I can build the same "fast fighter" with straight fighter levels in Cat Style. Or, you could simply convert all those abilities to feats and build it with a fighter. But, since those style abilities are extra, I don't have to spend feat slots (bonus or otherwise) on them - I effectively get four free feats to spread around on any fighting style I want (and you can take multiple styles). So, my fast fighter would go with Lightning Reflexes, Blind-Fight, Weapon Focus, WS, Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack, maybe WWA, and pick up some cool fighting abilities along the way.

All you are saying is, "I need to add 40 or so feats that are exclusive to fighters AND I need to tell fighters when they have to take them." Why on both counts?

And... adding prerequisites isn't the same thing? Prereqs are effectively saying "I need to tell the player when he can take this feat." I fail to see the difference. The WS tree was kept fighter-specific to give fighters something that other classes didn't. Granted, it's not really all that great, but it's the concept that counts.

I disagree. Just as Fighter was considered a dip class for valid reasons, Rogue was widely considered a 3 or 6 level dip class that just couldn't cut it at higher levels. Many people who played published adventure paths noted the complete uselessness of their rogue past about level 10, as it didn't have enough BAB to consistantly over come high level monsters AC, frequently found itself unable to do more than 5 or 10 damage per round vs. things immune to sneak attack, had a hit point shortage, and it had almost all the deficiencies of a fighter when it came to spells. Plus its skills were completely obseleted by high level magic.

That's largely a problem with game design. Eliminating immunities (which I did) makes rogues a lot more useful in combat; toning down or eliminating the wizard's utility spells helps to retain the rogue's usefulness in other situations. The BAB problem... well... I've run into that one myself, having played a rogue at 30th level - pretty much everything after my first two attacks missed. I changed the BAB progression so that all classes go to +20 before they flip over to EAB, but I won't claim it as a "fix" - I haven't been able to playtest it. I do think, though, that five extra points of AB will help.

Well obviously, it gets 10 more feats than the 3.X version which was already stronger than Rogues anyway.

Have you ever seen Upper Krust's CR rules system? He applied values to all monster abilities, rating them by using a feat as the base unit of measure. He also did all the core classes; fighter ended up being 1.0896/level, and rogue was 1.0941. I've tested his math, and it's spot-on - his monster CRs are very accurate.

Irony. Sneak attack has very limited utility at high levels as a greater and greater percentage of foes tend to be immune to it. Faced with a series of encounters with undead, oozes, constructs, etc, the rogue is left as a little more than a bystander and even moderately successful high level rogue construction generally involved splashing fighter for those 'piddly feats', moving into a full BAB progression class at some point, and maximizing UMD so you could use a wand backup if sneak attack failed.

Again, it's a fault of game design. It's poor game design to completely negate a class's abilities (especially a core ability like sneak attack).

Never mind that according to the rules as written, if the maze is shadowy (and hense provides concealment), that everything in it including the fighter is thereby immune to sneak attack. That however has to be one of the most widely ignored rules in 3.X.

Okay, you got me on that one. But let's say, for the sake of argument, that it doesn't (personally, I'd rule that it has a chance of negating SA). I think you'd agree that they have a roughly equal chance - if the fighter catches the rogue, he could put a hurting on her before she got away; whereas, the rogue could use hit-and-run tactics to wear the fighter down.

I can't? Why not? I fail to see the problem with this.

If every class were nothing but feats, they'd all be generic classes - you might as well use the Expert, Spellcaster, and Warrior from Unearthed Arcana. There's nothing wrong with that, if that's what you like, but I don't - I prefer unique classes. *shrug*

No, it goes down hard to CoDzilla or a Druid. However, that's a different problem, and its pretty much worth noting that the 3.X fighter could - baring abuse of shapechanging/class changing spells by a spellcaster, Bo9S munchkins, and certain broken PrCs - best any member of any other class in one-on-one combat as well.

Anything will go down to CoDzilla or a druid. A 3.x fighter would be evenly matched against a barbarian or paladin, I think, maybe even a ranger (really depends on builds - a lightly-armored fighter would be an even match; a tank would win). A monk... my money would be on the fighter, but the monk would give him a run for his money - he's got Stunning Fist, greater movement ability (which a 3.x fighter has no capacity to handle), dimension door, and healing.

A PP fighter would

Exactly! But if you turn it into a feat chain, anyone can learn it and it ceases to be special.

Why?

Because... anyone can take it?

That's the one, and it's pretty weak at that.

It's a first-tier ability.

No, that just lets you hit things with a bigger weapon. It doesn't let you do something cool besides hitting stuff.

It lets you deal more damage. Besides, it's another first-tier ability.

Nope, that just hits stuff harder. It doesn't let you do something cool besides hitting stuff.

Something cool = knocking someone back or knocking them down. That's called "battlefield control" - I can use this ability to knock my opponent into a pit or off a cliff, push him off a fellow party member, or knock him down so the rogue can get sneak attacks. How is that not cool? Granted, I could probably reduce the damage by 5 or 10 points, but still...

Nope, that just hits stuff harder and the ability to hit stuff isn't the problem with the fighter.

Stunning Blow = you can make an attempt to stun your opponent one or more times per round. Again, battlefield control - a disabled opponent is as good as dead if there's a rogue around. Stun one opponent, then turn to another to bash on him until the first one recovers. Or, use it against a powerful enemy and take the chance to retreat, whale on him a bit, or let a friend fall back in safety. I fail to see how this isn't useful.

Hmmm.. I could be misreading your intent here, but here goes.

Two-handed weapon style with 4 attacks per round, and the standard two-weapon fighting feat progression (bringing it to 7). Now, take Cat Style - Rapid Strike, Greater Blinding Strike - and use both. The conservative interpretation of your rules (that I'm now guessing you intended) is that this grants you 16+ attacks in a round which is already pretty insane. However, when I first read this:

"the fighter can take a combat stride and make a full round of melee attacks against any target in reach.

I interpreted 'any' to mean that that you attacked every target in reach, which easily gets us up over 50 attacks per round if your standard attack progression is 8 attacks, not even adding in cleaves and the like on your second time through your full attack progression.

Okay, that's my fault. That should read "any single target in reach", not "ALL targets in reach". A two-weapon fighter with Cat Style with four attacks/hand could get 9 attacks total - Greater Blinding Strike was intended to let the fighter get the jump on everyone by making his attacks outside of the initiative order on the first round only, then act on his normal initiative count on succeeding rounds. I obviously failed on that count. I'll fix that.

Errr... wrong, but we'll leave that aside for the moment.

Well... since most spells require saves (and those that don't work equally well against everyone), and the fighter has only one good save, mages know to use mind-affecting and hard-to-dodge spells to deal with fighters.

This the kind of thing that you say that makes me think you've got even less experience with high level play than I do. Mundane obstacles like traps, doors, and rockfalls can be easily handled by the fighter. That's no problem. By obstacles I mean things like invisibility, flight, high DR, forcecage, darkness, being submerged in deep water, falling, environmental hazards (smoke, heat, cold, etc.), sunder (or comparable ways to disarm the fighter), and so on and so forth ad infinitum.

No, it's more a problem of connotation vs. denotation. When you say "obstacles" I think of "something that prevents you from moving forward". The things you list are hazards - things that hinder movement, but don't prevent it outright, or make combat more difficult.

For that matter, most of those are difficult for ANY non-spellcaster to deal with. We do, however, have: Blind-Fight (darkness and invis), Endurance (heat and cold), Power Attack (and really, I've never seen DR trotted out as a foil to a fighter - PA was specifically designed to negate it, and 3.5 DR isn't that high anyway), and bows (to deal with flying enemies). Forcecage (and wall of force, etc.) can be dealt with by simply giving force effects hit points instead of making them unbreakable. I actually posted an idea on that not long ago. Being submerged in deep water: Very rare, IME, but fighters DO get Swim as a class skill. No one without free action (and rings of free action are a boon to fighters) can fight effectively underwater anyway. Falling: Ring of feather fall. Mages are the only ones who have the spell anyway, so that's a hazard to any class, not just fighters.

At high levels with RAW, the fighter is 100% dependent on spellcasters to stay 'in the game'. Without a suite of things like 'death ward', 'hero's feast', 'mindblank', 'freedom of action', etc. buffing them they go down instantly. Spellcasters can at least protect themselves, but fighter's are not only helpless, they are helpless against a wider variaty of effects.

You have a valid point, but the problem isn't just with the fighter - it's with spells. And, you just supported my earlier assertion that their weak saves make them more vulnerable to magic. Want to kill a mage? Drop a save-or-die spell like FoD on him. Want to kill a fighter? Drop a confusion or phantasmal killer on him. It's all relative - they both attack the weak save.

Rogues at high levels can't damage hardly anything without serious min/maxing (and depending on the target not even then), but at least they have a suite of skills to help with some hazards and evasion and slippery mind to help with others.

And with only a bunch of feats (good or not), the fighter isn't any better off. If you give them some class abilities, they could better handle threats and hazards.

All your 'fixes' to the fighter leave them just as helpless at high level play. Your 16 or 52 or whatever attacks per round, and your quadrupling damage or whatever you do change nothing accept increasing their ability to beat down things in a straight fight that by high levels they'll almost never face and which in any event they were already good at before you helped them out.

Now I'm starting to understand your point - I gave them more cool stuff to do, but I didn't help them to survive high-level combat any better than before. I have tweaked a lot of the spells toward this end, but I haven't playtested high-level play to see how it works.

 

[Kerrick]

I would say the key reason why a fighter is typically considered a 2-4 lv dip is primarily because feats fail to scale accordingly with higher lv spells, as well as the lack of high-powered feats which a fighter can take at higher lvs to ensure he remains on par with a spellcaster.

Given that spellcaster power increases exponentially, a fighter will never be able to keep up unless you give them supernatural abilities. I agree that fighters need more high-level stuff, but higher-level spells also need to be beaten with a nerf stick.

For instance, at lv17+, a wizard is easily gating in pyroclastic dragons, shapeshifting into god-knows-what, creating his own planes of existance and altering reality with but a thought.

Case in point. Those should be epic spells.

I would argue that a fighter's key flaw is not that he doesn't fight well enough, but that he does not have enough options (not just options on how to fight, but options on how to deal with whatever comes his way).

In a nutshell, look at how tome of battle handled the warblade. I just feel that is everything the fighter should have been.

I don't have ToB and have little interest in getting it... want to toss me a few examples?

 

[nonsi256]

I went over your classes and the class discussions and this is just my overall impression.​

>> My primary aim for revising the classes was to make them a)
>> interesting; b) viable at all levels; and c) fun to play.​

- “interesting” amounts to the question “is it interesting enough“​

- “viable” is relevant to the entire set of rules and DM-players expectation level.​

- “fun to play”... from where I’m standing, no real evidence of success. I’ll explain.

​

>> In case anyone cares, I use a formula for figuring out skill points.​

I don’t see this approach as relevant. SkPts/level should be derived from 2 factors:​

1. Overall balance against the other classes.​

2. How many would be required (on the average) to assume the different roles the class is tailor made for, or in general, to be interesting enough.​

As for the chosen strategy with the classes...........................


​

Barbarian​

>> Barbarians were difficult to do at first - they were little more ​

>> than a raging fighter with more hit points. I must confess, I
>> seriously considered ditching the class entirely and making the
>> rage abilities into a feat chain.​

You should’ve done that.​

Being more or less a 1-trick pony in battle and very little outside of it indicates this quite clearly. Furthermore, I never liked the fact that one learns to get “really really angry” and gain ever increasing stat boosts from it. Getting mad helps when there’s nothing else useful that you know. IRL, the one that keeps cool is the one having the edge.​

Bard​

>> Bards badly needed an overhaul (and probably still need some
>> work)​

I couldn’t agree more.

​

>> they had a little of everything but weren't good at anything ​

>> (besides RP), their songs were weak (except for fascinate, which
>> was horribly broken)​

Not exactly. Fascinate is not a combat option and buffing is not meaningless.

​

>> , and said songs were granted at the exact same level, ensuring ​

>> that pretty every much every bard was like every other bard
>> (not to mention that you could tell a bard's level just by hearing
>> what song he was singing).​

1. Spells, skills & feats are more than enough to establish variations.​

2. And how could one determine that the Bard he’s fighting would always choose to start the encounter with the highest bardic music he possesses? The most you can deduce is a minimum figure (not really helpful).​

>> bardic knowledge got beefed up, and I gave them some language
>> skills​

beefed up too much in my view. Way too much. This practically makes failure an impossible outcome when maximizing Knowledge ranks.​

As for the language skills... what’s wrong with expending some skill points for any language you think you might need in the future? Isn’t that exactly what you’re trying to avoid – making all of them the same?​

>> then I added enough songs so that each had four, for a total of sixteen songs.​

. . .​

>> The formula I used for determining the bardic song DCs is 11 + >> class level +(class level/3).​

Ok, imagine spellcasting with 25% failure chances (on the average).​

Cleric​

>> domains - they get one at 1st level and another at 10th.​

This makes them even more uniform at levels 1 – 10 and changes nothing when they join the CODZILLA club.​

Furthermore, I see no justification in invest an effort in reinventing the domain mechanics (the overall effect always ended up negligible no matter how it chose to go at it).

​

>> I also figured out a way to make greater and lesser access work. ​

>> Limiting spellsor doing spheres, like in 2E, doesn't work - I've
>> tried it.​

In my book, AD&D’s sole justification for existence was that it gave birth to the concept of feats. It was a lame attempt of making things seem more realistic than in OD&D. given AD&D’s level of complexity and how little it felt more realistic on so few aspects – I see it as almost a perfect failure.

​

>> turn undead is limited to the Good and Sun domains​

And what about the other domain – do they also have other powers with similar mechanics (level-dependant that is)?

​

>> finally… the Extra Domain feat lets you:​

So now a single feat covers multiple domain-related abilities? Seems too much for a feat to me.​

Druid​

>> I had nothing until I saw an idea someone else shared with me -
>> masteries.​

I find the general idea quite nice, but given the majority of benefits amount to some sort of numbers augmentation, I find the execution somewhat lacking.

​

>> so it was fairly easy to come up with four paths - nature, ​

>> elements, weather, andanimals - and split up their abilities a bit.​

I just don’t get why weather is separated from elements.

​

>> Now that all druids don't have the ability to assume all kinds of ​

>> forms, their power dropped significantly.​

Not really. Wildshape with spells + companion + nature’s ally – that’s what’s too much. Given you limited variety, your players just need to invest just a bit more minmax effort.​

As for Hibernate... I find it meaningless (and if it could have some usefulness, it’d probably have little to no relevance at level 20).​

Fighter​

>> Fighters were fairly easy to work with, and fairly hard​

Of all the Fighter shortcomings, your version managed to fix only the perception issue.​

It’s still boring.​

It still loses the action economy.​

It still has no edge at enduring hardships​

It still has no combat options that are totally beyond the reach of other classes.​

Monk

​

>> To be fair, it was built off the foundations of the 1E monk, but ​

>> still… immunityto poison and disease? Spell resistance? Ability to
>> speak to any living creature? Come on… where are they getting
>> this stuff?​

We see eye to eye on his one.

​

>> So, I decided to remake the monk. First, I needed an archetype. ​

>> Martial artistworked well enough, and could be divorced from the ​

>> Oriental flavor/baggage that has always seemed to weigh it ​

>> down (why do martial artists HAVE to be Oriental?​

A generalized warrior could be a great martial artist. The oriental theme is the only thing that justifies it being a separate class.

​

>> Then, I started to rebuild it. I used some ideas my DM had been ​

>> using for a newcampaign - monk have different fighting styles ​

>> named for the four elements andthe directions, loosely based off ​

>> the Avatar cartoon (even though it's a kid'sshow, I highly ​

>> recommend watching it). Each element has a different style, and
>> the directions are focuses within the disciplines - attack, defense,
>> etc.​

The Avatar cartoon is quite nice. I just started watching it myself. But...:​

1. I personally don’t like anime in RPG, but that’s just me I guess.​

2. What is the 4-elem approach if not oriental?

​

>> The extra attack from the flurry was dropped - 5 attacks/round >> at 2d10 each was a bit much, IMO​

And still, on the overall, the Monk is probably the weakest base class ever (when you get familiar enough with the game rules & options).

​

>> After I'd filled in everything else, I had a few dead levels left, so ​

>> I tossed in somebonus feats - but spread out this time, instead
>> of all bunched up at the bottom.​

Each class feature should have significance and not be just filler. If you’re short on ideas, steal from others – there’s no shame in it when it comes to homebrewing.​

Paladin​

In general, a significant improvement to the core, but that’s easy – I think it’s actually a challenge to change the Paladin without improving it.​

Ranger​

I also agree that a dedicated woodman-warrior class doesn’t go well thematically with TWF and that they need to have an extra edge in their home turf. However, I see no justification for this mongrel class (a Fighter, but less. Has spells, but less. Has companion, but less. Has good skills, but less.......) to exist. As far as I’m concerned, this one is the Barb’s equal partner in not having enough justification t exist.​

Sorcerer​

I never liked the Sorc/Wis split (for so many reasons), but keeping the core classes, of all your modified classes, you did more than a decent job with this one... except for the intrinsic metamagic stuff. If the class is supposed to improve metamagic usage, then it should at least have bonus metamagic feats as a class feature (mastering something you never took in the first place (a viable option) just seems too odd).​

Wizard​

Still the strongest base class.​

Also, I never liked all that specializing stuff. I always preferred to think of a caster as specialized or generalized as the collection of spells available to him.



​

And on the overall:​

- You sure have managed to enable a bit more build-time versatility, but to my better judgment, most of the post-build results are actually less game-time versatile in he aftermath.​

- What’s with the non-standard saves?​

- What’s with the negligible changes to spells-per-day? What does this change come to serve?​

- I don’t want to get into specifics, but there are some inaccuracies/inconsistencies in the discussions document.​

 

[Runestar]

I don't have ToB and have little interest in getting it... want to toss me a few examples?

Here is the basic gist of a warblade.
Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords

If you want to know what maneuvers he gets, you can consider looking though the maneuver cards here (bearing in mind the warblade gets access to diamond mind, iron heart, tiger claw, white raven and stone dragon).
Maneuver Cards -- A Web Enhancement for Tome of Battle

That is the closest I can come to explaining what he does without breaking any copyright issues.

To start off, d12s, ample skill points, decent skill list, flavourful class features, weapon aptitude. And that is before getting to maneuvers - the meat of the class.

 

[Celebrim]

To start off, d12s, ample skill points, decent skill list, flavourful class features, weapon aptitude. And that is before getting to maneuvers - the meat of the class.

Yes, all that and he slices vegetables too.

He's also based on the descriptions I've seen of him in use and looking over the powers roughly as powerful as an entire 3.0 party of 4 PC's, capable of single-handedly taking on CR equivalent encounters without much sweat.

And for all that, he's also utterly boring, obviously magical, and totally tied to an Eastern mystical flavored combat that I would have thought had gone the way of the dodo when Bruce Lee utterly ripped it apart, to say nothing of UFC and how MMA exposed it's silliness.