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What DO you DO for... Fighters?

EvilGM

Explorer
I give every class more abilities, in fact, something at every level.

Some of the highlights for Fighters:

Combat Weaponry (Ex): At 3rd level or higher, a fighter may use weapons with which he is not proficient at a -2 penalty on attack rolls (instead of the usual -4). He may also throw weapons with no range increment at this same penalty. In addition, throwing any two-handed or smaller weapon in this manner is a standard action, not a full-round action.

Second Wind (Ex): At 3rd level, a fighter can heal himself of a number of points of damage equal to his fighter level plus his Constitution bonus (minimum 1) once per day as a free action.

Intimidate (Ex): At 5th level, a fighter receives a +2 bonus to all Intimidate checks. Every five fighter levels thereafter (10th, 15th, and 20th) this bonus increases by +2.

Improved Charge (Ex): At 7th level or higher, a charging fighter adds +4 to his attack roll (or +4 bonus on the Strength check to Bullrush or Overrun). He still suffers the -2 penalty to AC until his next turn.

Improved Combat Reflexes (Ex): At 9th level or higher, a fighter receives additional attacks of opportunity per round. Each attack of opportunity is taken at the fighter's highest BAB.

Combat Senses (Ex): Starting at 11th level (and every two levels thereafter), the fighter may choose one of the following: a +1 to Initiative, a +1 dodge bonus to AC, or a +1 to Reflex saves. These can be taken multiple times and stack.
 

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Nyaricus

First Post
EP said:
Very cool. What else do you give to the other classes, I wonder?
Perhaps he could contirubute to the other What DO you DO threads, in this case - or even start up his own [personally, I'd love to see both]. I'd rather not threadjack, anyways.

EDIT: thanks for the links LO
 


Shieldhaven

Explorer
I give fighters Profession and Knowledge (warrior tradition) as class skills, because a) why on earth would they automatically be worse at a generic skill like Profession than a wizard? and b) surely even the fighters have something in which they are well-suited to study and grow knowledgeable.

Haven
 


Nyaricus

First Post
green slime said:
I give fighters a feat every level, instead of every second level.

That's it.
Yikes! I've heard about people doing that before, and it just kinda seems like overkill to me - what's your reasoning behind it?
 

airwalkrr

Adventurer
Nyaricus said:
I scanned over the other posts, but this one really stuck out for me - Tonguez, can you extrapolate and post these up? I've love to see what you've done man :)

I too, really like that idea and would be interested to hear more.
 

green slime

First Post
Nyaricus said:
Yikes! I've heard about people doing that before, and it just kinda seems like overkill to me - what's your reasoning behind it?

Not really overkill.

Firstly, it appears as overkill, but isn't really. It just an attempt to keep the fighter class interesting throughout all 20 levels, in competition with the mages/clerics of the world, and specifically to combat all the PrC's which grant new shiny abilities every level.

What does a fighter do? He does nothing else but fight. He gets his thrilling two skill points per level. "Jump and Climb? w00t! and at 8th level, I can acquire boots of flying and never use those skills again!"

By core rules, Fighters gain less feats than wizards do spells: the counter argument being, "but spells don't last all day!" Which is only partially true, as they can at higher levels. Secondly, the feats are seldomly such that they are always relevant to the situation at hand. Instead, a great many are situational. Improved Grapple, isn't going to get used every fight, unless you decide to really specialise along this line.

By the core rules, there are some really dead levels for fighters:
5th (+1 BAB, +2 skills, +d10 hp.... must take hours to level up).
7th (same)
11th (same)
13th (same)
17th (same)
19th (same)

And that is counting the bonus feat every third level, which everyone gets, as an "exciting" level.

By similar comparison the rogue:
14th (first level of no feat, no special ability, counting standard feat every third level, as a big bonus)
20th (same as above)

Barbarian:
Doesn't happen!

Paladin's and Ranger's are a special case, as they are extremely weak spellcasters: something should be done about
1) their spellcasting, and
2) the Ranger's Dire Lamb pet. (3.5 fixed the paladin's never-present mount syndrome)


Now, in this specific campaign, I have shuffled around which classes are available to which race, to provide more specific flavour to each race. Rangers and Barbarians are not available to Humans: Only Paladins, Fighters, Monks and Hexblades of the martial classes. Paladins have had their remove disease ability ability upgraded to a remove affliction, which affects most low level ailments: disease, poison, blindness, deafness, and functions as Lesser Restoration to boot. (Its 1/week at low levels for crying out loud!!!!)

Paladins caster level is set to half their paladin level, or their paladin level -3, which ever is greater. Otherwise there is no point to having GMW or similar.

Other changes to paladins I cannot remember right now.

Rogues get more skill points.

I have strived for all classes to receive something iconic for their class at each level.

One reason that fighters in 3.5 are especially weak choices for players after level 4 because there are prestige classes which give stuff away every level. The easiest way to compensate for this, and to attract players to at least consider staying on the straight and narrow, is not to ban all PrCs outright, nor weaken them, but to make sure that each class is attractive as an option in its own right. True spellcasters are always attractive: they gain new spell levels every second level, always gain access to new toys (more spells). As it stands today in core, the poor fighter is the least attractive.
 

Dog Moon

Adventurer
Nyaricus said:
Yikes! I've heard about people doing that before, and it just kinda seems like overkill to me - what's your reasoning behind it?

Now what would be awesome is to have that in a campaign which already gives everyone one feat per level. Think of all the featy goodness! :D
 

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