Remind me again why this is a bad idea.

[bondetamp]

While you people seem to keep a discussion going without my help, I figure I should post a bit just so that I don't look like a post-and-run type of guy.

Thanks for all the replies.

I know that my choice of example was a poor one. One of the reasons why the example is poorly thought out is that I've never been much of a fighter player. My interests lies with the rogue.

The reason why I still tried to go for the Fighter is that most (all?) of his special abilities are already quantified as feats, so it seemed like it should be easy to fix an even trade.

 

[kamosa]

I had really hoped the class splat books would have something along those lines.

I agree with you totally. I had hoped that the splat books would allow you to create types of characters with in one class. IE the ranger book would be about customizing the ranger class. Instead the splat books were about taking other classes and playing them as the class book. IE a way to take a fighter and play it as a ranger. Boo that!

While some of the feats were cool, I found most of the presitge classes to be a waste of time. After all if I want to play class X, I'll start as class X, not take class Y and try to turn it into X. I guess what I wanted was a way to turn class X into X.1, X.2 or X.3 variations of X.

 

[Doc_Subtlety]

Well, like I said before:

- Try playing the game as it exists now, before changing it. 3E can do a lot, even without tweaking. Try not to worry about having a few extra abilities you'll never use. Happens to everybody, even in real life.

- It is okay to tweak, just be careful. In general, you shouldn't let players trade something they feel is "useless" straight up for something they really want.

As for prestige classes...I just wish they'd put a little more thought into them. Some are really good for making your character excel at the abilities that interest you, but a lot of them just felt like filler.

 

[Illuminae]

SIMPLE CHANGES

Without putting at risk balance, as it may happen altering the whole class, you could simply exchange feats:


DROP -Medium armor proficiency
- Heavy armor Proficiency
- Shield Proficiency

GET - Cosmopolitan 3 times

SIMPLE AS THAT.

You got your class skills, balance is kept.

hope it helped.

 

[Gromm]

The last game I played in had a fighter/rogue that was basically exactly what the original post was talking about. With a little multiclassing its not too hard to make anything you can think of. If you wanted to change the actual classes, its doable, but much harder to balance.
The Urban Ranger from MotW might fit the role pretty well, especially mutliclassed with a Rogue.

 

[Darklone]

Once again.

The Quintessential Fighter by Mongoose Publishing gives you exactly what you want. Different starting types for fighters with small modifications that are usually a bit underbalanced. But VERY nice ideas.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

One thing to be careful of when doing this is multi-classing. A good number of classes (and some prestige classes) have armor and weapon proficiencies. If a player begins trading out class features (like heavy armor proficiency) that he doesn't plan on using for feats he does plan on using, there should be an agreement that if the character multiclasses into another class with the class features that were traded out, the character still doesn't gain the class features.

That way, this:

Player: OK, so I switched out all armor proficiencies and all martial weapon proficiencies for EWP bastard sword and weapon focus: bastard sword. Oh, now I multiclass into Uber-samurai and get all of the features I lost for free! My character is kewl.

plays like this:

DM: I'm afraid it doesn't work like that. You swapped out all armor proficiencies and all martial weapon proficiencies from every class you'll ever take for those feats. If you want to wear heavy armor, you can spend a feat like everyone else without that class feature. . . .