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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6266204" data-attributes="member: 4937">Fundamentally, the fighter is a professional man at arms and is skilled at the sort of things professional combatants are skilled at.In my game, this means that fighters are potentially:a) Skilled at carrying loads (Implemented via the Porter 'skill', ranks of which increase the threshold of your light and medium loads)b) Skilled at moving at a great pace (Implemented via the Run 'skill', ranks of which increase base movement rate)c) Masters of combat tactics (Implemented via the Tactics skill, which allows various combat maneuvers and benefits)d) Skilled in the leadership of troops in combat (Implemented via the Leadership skill, which vastly improves the utility of the Aid Other action in combat, among other things)e) Able to handle, ride and employ horses and other martial animals in and out of combat (Existing Ride and Handle Animal skills)f) Able to shrug off injury and mental blows (Implemented via resistance to Horror and 'Mettle' type abilities)g) Reasonable movement skills (Existing Climb and Swim skills)That's a lot of different capabilities.  Fighters get 4 skill points per level.Fighter has proven such a capable class as I've written it that I have seen no need to expand this list of potential expertise directly.  Because of their high strength, out of combat, fighters have tended to be useful for carrying whatever heavy objects that the party has (including other PCs), tending to the animals and overcoming obstacles by sheer brute force (kick down the doors, bend bars, etc.).  There utility in combat has generally made up for there lack of breadth out of combat.  A martial combatant wishing to extend into other skill areas can do that by taking as his starting Trait 'Unusual Background' (ei, Officer, Combat Medic, Martial Artist, Military Scout, Sentinel, Bodyguard, whatever), and/or by multi-classing into other martial classes with no loss of BAB.   For example, a 'Commando' might tip for a few levels of 'Hunter' to pick up stealth and alertness type skills, or a Swashbuckler might dip for a few levels of 'Explorer' to pick up movement and social skills.  Conversely these other classes might dip into Fighter for greater versatility in combat. It would of course be possible to reduce variation in the available skills between these classes.The real issue with Fighter is utility after about 6th level, when spell-casters start picking up access to things like Flight or when the party has things like Bags of Holding that pretty much obsolete the fighters core strengths.  In traditional 3.X, the fighter starts to taper off in utility about 6th level and becomes obsolete by 13th level.  Since I don't have any play test time with my new version of the fighter at high level, I'm not sure how much of that remains true.   At high levels, IMO the problem isn't really with the fighter's build, but with certain spells as written so I've put most of my efforts in revision with respect to high level play there.   I foresee the Fighter playing a lot like a Brick type superhero at high levels - very high hit points, high AC, very high base movement rate (around 60 wouldn't be out of the question), good damage capabilities, etc.   If it turns out that the Fighter is lagging the spellcasters at high level, I'll probably look to address the problem with increasingly potent feats that allow for Brick type superhero actions - crashing through walls, or causing earthquakes by stomping, for example - and/or by rolling multiple feats into one using the 'Tactical' feat pattern of a feat granting three benefits.   Since the current version of the fighter gets something like 30 feats by 20th level, this should work sufficiently IMO.</blockquote>

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