(Yet another) Try at fixing the Fighter

[Dimitri Mazieres]

After reading through most of the threads already posted that have discussed ways to improve the standard 3.5 Fighter, I thought I might as well give a shot at a custom fix, taking into account what seem to be the most commonly perceived problems with the class, namely, lack of versatility and/or interesting class options, poor skill options and points and poor saves.

I think these changes somehow take away from the "easy to play" concept that sometimes is mentioned in regards to the Fighter, but I guess you can't have your cake and eat it too, right?

Alignment: Any.

Hit Die: d10.

Class Skills: Climb (Str), Craft (Int), Handle Animal (Cha), Intimidate (Cha), Jump (Str), Profession (Wis), Ride (Dex), Swim (Str), plus two other skills of the player's choice, selected at character creation.

Skill Points at 1st Level: (4 + Int modifier) × 4.
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 4 + Int modifier.

Class    Base             Fort     Ref     Will                                
Level    Attack           Save     Save    Save    Special                     
         Bonus
1st      +1               +2       0      +0       Bonus feat, Weapon Focus
2nd      +2               +3       0      +0       Bonus feat
3rd      +3               +3       +1     +1       Fighting style I
4th      +4               +4       +1     +1       Bonus feat, Weapon Specialization
5th      +5               +4       +1     +1       Ignore DR I
6th      +6/+1            +5       +2     +2       Bonus feat
7th      +7/+2            +5       +2     +2       Fighting style II
8th      +8/+3            +6       +2     +2       Bonus feat
9th      +9/+4            +6       +3     +3       Mettle
10th     +10/+5           +7       +3     +3       Bonus feat, Ignore DR II
11th     +11/+6/+1        +7       +3     +3       Fighting style III
12th     +12/+7/+2        +8       +4     +4       Bonus feat
13rd     +13/+8/+3        +8       +4     +4     
14th     +14/+9/+4        +9       +4     +4       Bonus feat
15th     +15/+10/+5       +9       +5     +5       Fighting style IV, Ignore DR III
16th     +16/+11/+6/+1    +10      +5     +5       Bonus feat
17th     +17/+12/+7/+2    +10      +5     +5     
18th     +18/+13/+8/+3    +11      +6     +6       Bonus feat
19th     +19/+14/+9/+4    +11      +6     +6       Fighting style V
20th     +20/+15/+10/+5   +12      +6     +6       Bonus feat, Fighting style mastery

Class Features

All of the following are class features of the Fighter.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: A Fighter is proficient with all simple and martial weapons and with all armor (heavy, medium, and light) and shields (including tower shields).

Bonus Feats: At 1st level, a Fighter gets a bonus combat-oriented feat in addition to the feat that any 1st-level character gets and the bonus feat granted to a human character. The Fighter gains an additional bonus feat at 2nd level and every two Fighter levels thereafter (4th, 6th, 8th, 10th, 12th, 14th, 16th, 18th, and 20th). These bonus feats must be drawn from the feats noted as fighter bonus feats. A Fighter must still meet all prerequisites for a bonus feat, including ability score and base attack bonus minimums.

Weapon Focus: At 1st level, a gains the Weapon Focus feat with a weapon of his choice.

Fighting style (Ex): At 3rd level, a Fighter must select one of two fighting styles to pursue: Light or Heavy. This choice affects the character’s class features but does not restrict his selection of feats or special abilities in any way.
The Light fighting style favors mobility and penetrating the enemies' defenses. The Fighter may use its abilities while wearing light or no armor at all.
The Heavy fighting style favors dealing great amounts of damage, while resisting the onslaught of the enemies' attacks. The Fighter may use its abilities while wearing medium or heavy armor.
Refer to the following table for the abilities provided by the two fighting styles.

Style   Light                          Heavy
Stage   
I       Insight bonus +1/+1            Increase damage 1 step
        Dodge bonus +1                 AC bonus +1
II      Insight bonus +2/+2            Increase damage 1 step
        Dodge bonus +2                 AC bonus +2
        Increase critical range 1
III     Insight bonus +3/+3            Increase damage 1 step
        Dodge bonus +3                 AC bonus +3
IV      Insight bonus +4/+4            Increase damage 1 step
        Dodge bonus +4                 AC bonus +4
        Increase critical range 2
V       Insight bonus +5/+5            Increase damage 1 step
        Dodge bonus +5                 AC bonus +5
Mastery Irresistible strike            Brutal strike

Light fighting style abilities:

Insight bonus (Ex): The Fighter's training allows him to see gaps in his enemies' defenses that wouldn't be apparent to the naked eye. You gain the listed bonus to your attack and damage rolls while wearing light or no armor.

Dodge bonus (Ex): The Fighter's training teaches him that the best defense is not getting hit at all. You gain the listed bonus to your armor class while wearing light or no armor.

Increase critical range (Ex): The Fighter learns to take advantage of every opporunity to inflict as much damage as possible with whatever he is holding as a weapon. You increase the critical range of any weapon you wield by one step. At 15th level, the critical range increases one step further.
Example: a 3rd level fighter wielding a longsword would treat the sword's critical range as 17-20 instead of the normal 19-20. At 15th level, the critical range would become 15-20.
This ability stacks with the Improved Critical feat and the Keen weapon special quality (but not with both, as per standard rules).

Irresistible strike (Ex): At 20th level, the Fighter can take advantage of any kind of flaw in his enemies' defenses to successfully land his strikes. Once per day, you may treat all your attacks as touch attacks for a number of rounds equal to your Dexterity modifier.

Heavy fighting style abilities:

Increase damage (Ex): The Fighter trains hard to make the most of anything he has available for a weapon. You treat the damage of the weapong you are holding as one step greater than usual for its kind. Refer to Table 7-4 in the PHB to see what damage you should use. The damage die is increased one step further for each 4 levels after 3rd (7th, 11th, 15th and 19th).
Example: a 3rd level Fighter wielding a longsword would inflict 1d10 damage instead of the normal 1d8. He would increase the die type every four levels thereafter, until by 19th level, where he would deal 2d8 points of damage instead of 1d8.

AC bonus (Ex): The Fighter's extensive training with heavier armor enables him to improve the protection it provides. You receive the listed armor bonus while wearing medium or heavy armor.

Brutal strike (Ex): At 20th level, the Fighter becomes superbly adept at dealing great amounts of damage. Once per day, you may inflict full damage on all your attacks (no damage roll needed) for a number of rounds equal to your Strength modifier.

Weapon Specialization: At 4th level, the Fighter gains the Weapon Specialization feat for a weapon for which he meets the prerequisites.

Ignore DR (Ex): At 5th level, by virtue of his intensive training, the fighter learns to bypass some of the special defenses possessed by certain creatures. Choose one type of damage reduction from the following: damage type (bludgeoning, piercing & slashing), special material (adamantite, silver, etc.), or magic. When fighting a creature that possesses this type of defense and you don't have an appropriate weapon, you ignore 5 points of DR when calculating damage inflicted.
This ability does not count as extra damage if you have a weapon with the appropriate quality.
At 10th and 15th level, you may choose another type of DR to ignore, or add 5 more points to the amount of DR you may ignore.

Mettle (Ex): The Fighter's resolve allows him to endure in situations where most others would falter. If he makes a successful Will or Fortitude save against an attack that normally would have a lesser effect on a successful save (such as any spell with a saving throw entry of Will half or Fortitude partial), he instead completely negates the effect. An unconscious or sleeping character does not gain the benefit of mettle.
If the Fighter already has the Mettle ability from a second class, he still suffers no ill effects on a successful save, but also if he fails the saving throw he suffers only the lesser effect.

My intention was to address the aforementioned problems in the following way:

Skills/Skill points: What most people do: 4+Int points/level. As for the skill list, I thought that the ability to choose two other skills to add to the list would give some flexibility without stepping too much on the toes of other classes.

Versatility/Uniqueness: The fighting styles provide a certain amount of these, in the same way the combat styles do so for the Ranger (although I'll be the first to admit that these are more powerful options), while keeping the original bonus feats for further customization. Also, I added the WF/WS feats as class features to free up a couple of feats for the lengthier list of fighter bonus feats available since the PHB release, and since most people take them anyway.
Finally, I liked the idea of the capstone ability from Pathfinder, so I added the fighting style master at 20th level as an incentive to keep with the class.

Poor saves: Although I didn't change the saves progression, I think the Mettle ability somehow compensates the poor Will save, and strengthens the Fort save, improving the Fighter's odds against save-or-die/suck spells. I intentionally didn't touch the Ref save, as I think the class shouldn't be good at everything, and there's always feats for further improvement.

Reliance on magic items: This is where the Ignore DR ability comes into play, so that the "weapon golf bag" situation could be a bit lessened. I intentionally left the alignment DR option unavailable, as I thought that was too much a "mystical" condition to justify being bypassed by combat knowledge. And also so that bless spells keep their importance.
Also, some of the fighting style abilities try to help with this issue, as well, such as the bigger damage dice for the heave style.

So, what do you think of it?

I understand that this version is pretty powerful when compared to the other martial classes, but it still probably isn't as powerful as high level casters.
Also, this was purely a mental exercise, since I haven't playtested it, or thought about what may happen when combined with each and every other class (although I think some combinations could work well, such as Light Fighter/Swashbuckler).

 

[Celebrim]

I don't think that covers it.

IMO, there is no problem at all with the fighter's versitility in combat. You've got a ton of feats to customize with.

The fighters problems are:

1) At high levels, spell casters are simultaneously getting more powerful spells to choose from and more new spells per level. Their power increases exponentially beginning at around 7th level. The fighter's power continues to increase at a nearly linear rate. As a result, at about 13th level the fighter begins to lag all the spell casting classes in raw power.
2) Outside of combat, the fighter's options are limited and in particular, are generally limited to the magical equipment that he carries.
3) In combat, the fighter seldom finds better things to do than full attack.

I don't think your fix addresses any of the real underlying problems.

A fix for #1 (IMO) would involve something like, "At high levels, the fighter gets both more feats per level and more powerful feats to choose from."
A fix for #2 (IMO) would involve making the skill system more interesting, giving fighters class skills comparable in value to the class skills possessed by say rogues, rangers, and druids, and accepting that what a high level fighter can do innately is something approaching magic and not anything like realistic.
A fix for #3 (IMO) isn't addressed by fixing the fighter, and instead involves adding additional options to combat that don't require feats to take, and instead, rather than having feats open up new combat options, feats just make you better at any of the many combat options you have.

What 4e did is an attempt to fix the fighter in a very different way than I would have gone about it.

They fix #1 by making everyone (including fighters) spellcaster.
They fix #2 by giving everyone the same out of combat options (more or less).
They fix #3 by simplifying the combat system, removing options, and then letting you customize heavily through your 'spell' selection.

Note that I don't actually consider any of those to be 'fixes', so please understand when I criticize what you are trying to do, I don't think you failed any worse than the professionals who do this for a living. It's just not an easy problem, and to a certain extent what constitutes a fix for it is very subjective. What you did may work for you, just as 4e works for some people.

 

[Aus_Snow]

The light armoured fighting style only kicks in at 3rd level. This is a problem because the class itself grants heavy armour proficiency at level 1, and no disincentives for running with that straight away. Also, no incentives to do anything else in particular. So, it's rather like the TWF Ranger, who must either try TWF by taking the basic feat at character level 1, then find Ranger level 2 is redundant, or fight with one weapon at level 1, and suddenly (miraculously!) become a TWF Ranger at level 2. Or yeah, fight with two weapons at level 1 without the feat, and hardly be able to hit anything, until things suddenly change with 1000 XP. Bleh. Except in this case, it's even worse: level 1 and 2 with light or no armour, and risk a death that simply shouldn't have happened for the sake of one of the level 3 options, or level 1 and 2 with heavy or medium armouir, then suddenly (miraculously!) become a light (or no) armour Fighter at level 3. Mrh.

Also, I agree with Celebrim, on just about all of that. It's no easy task, that's for sure. Something I've found especially problematic is avoiding front-loading the Fighter like crazy. And the Ranger, incidentally, but that's another tale.

One tiny, teensy thing, that has nothing at all to do with balance and such - would you please consider adding Profession to their list of class skills? It's just something objectionable, to me. But either way, I'm sure it will have little impact for most people.

Something worth looking at is the 'Battle Fortitude' (per the Scout class) style feature -- for Will plus another thing, perhaps?

 

[Dimitri Mazieres]

A fix for #1 (IMO) would involve something like, "At high levels, the fighter gets both more feats per level and more powerful feats to choose from."
A fix for #2 (IMO) would involve making the skill system more interesting, giving fighters class skills comparable in value to the class skills possessed by say rogues, rangers, and druids, and accepting that what a high level fighter can do innately is something approaching magic and not anything like realistic.
A fix for #3 (IMO) isn't addressed by fixing the fighter, and instead involves adding additional options to combat that don't require feats to take, and instead, rather than having feats open up new combat options, feats just make you better at any of the many combat options you have.

I see... I also posted my ideas over at RPG.net and there what was commented as being one of the major problems was the relative impotency that Fighters (and Rangers) face against spells' high DCs, even with moderately optimized spellcasters, and the Mettle option not being enough to counter this.

As for your proposed fixes, more precisely #1 and #3, do you consider that any of the optional 3rd party systems do a good job at addressing them?
For #1, I understand that Iron Heroes has a feat system where the feats become more powerful as the character rises in level. And as for #3, Malhavoc Press' Book of Iron Might supposedly to include a combat maneuvers system for creating maneuvers on the fly (though I haven't read it, either).

Note that I don't actually consider any of those to be 'fixes', so please understand when I criticize what you are trying to do, I don't think you failed any worse than the professionals who do this for a living. It's just not an easy problem, and to a certain extent what constitutes a fix for it is very subjective. What you did may work for you, just as 4e works for some people.

Thanks. I appreciate your comments. It's the kind of discussion I wanted to propose.

The light armoured fighting style only kicks in at 3rd level. This is a problem because the class itself grants heavy armour proficiency at level 1, and no disincentives for running with that straight away. Also, no incentives to do anything else in particular. So, it's rather like the TWF Ranger, who must either try TWF by taking the basic feat at character level 1, then find Ranger level 2 is redundant, or fight with one weapon at level 1, and suddenly (miraculously!) become a TWF Ranger at level 2. Or yeah, fight with two weapons at level 1 without the feat, and hardly be able to hit anything, until things suddenly change with 1000 XP. Bleh. Except in this case, it's even worse: level 1 and 2 with light or no armour, and risk a death that simply shouldn't have happened for the sake of one of the level 3 options, or level 1 and 2 with heavy or medium armouir, then suddenly (miraculously!) become a light (or no) armour Fighter at level 3. Mrh.

I see the point of comparison with the Ranger combat style (moreover, since it was from where I based the fighting style concept), but I don't think it's as bad as you see it, since you never lose proficiency with any kind of armor. So, you can play until 3rd level with a heavily armored Fighter, and after that, if you like the concept of a lightly armored character, you can select that style, without losing anything. If there ever arises a situation where you need to use heavy armor, you can do that, the only drawback being that you can't access the light style abilities. And the same goes for the heavy style.

Although...

Now that I think of it, it doesn't make much sense for the heavy style fighter to lose the increased damage die ability if he ever finds himself in a situation without medium/heavy armor (i.e. if he's attacked in the middle of his sleep)...

One tiny, teensy thing, that has nothing at all to do with balance and such - would you please consider adding Profession to their list of class skills? It's just something objectionable, to me. But either way, I'm sure it will have little impact for most people.

I guess that the player could select it as one of the two additional skills, but I see your point, and I agree. It's quite ridiculous that a Fighter character couldn't have any kind of background skill with which to earn a living. Consider it added.

Something worth looking at is the 'Battle Fortitude' (per the Scout class) style feature -- for Will plus another thing, perhaps?

You mean a fixed bonus to Will saves every x number of levels? It would need to be a bit more frequent than the Scout's feature, as by 20th level he receives a total bonus of +3 to his Fort save. Not much if we consider what has been said regarding optimized spellcasters' DCs...

How about giving the Mettle ability earlier, and then providing an "Improved Mettle" ability at 9th level?

 

[Eldritch_Lord]

As for your proposed fixes, more precisely #1 and #3, do you consider that any of the optional 3rd party systems do a good job at addressing them?
For #1, I understand that Iron Heroes has a feat system where the feats become more powerful as the character rises in level. And as for #3, Malhavoc Press' Book of Iron Might supposedly to include a combat maneuvers system for creating maneuvers on the fly (though I haven't read it, either).

Iron Heroes is a good source of scaling feats, and so is the Frank & K Tome series on the WotC boards. You can't really import Iron Heroes feats wholesale, because they assume a lack of the standard Vancian casters, but importing those and adding some more to cover the gaps should work well.

Iron Might...doesn't really work. It's an admirable effort, but they still have the Fighters Don't Get Nice Things mentality--so many of the simplest stunts are almost impossible to pull off because to use them you need to take -10 or -20 attack penalties (for instance, to blind the target for 1d4 rounds, you take a -30 (!) penalty to the attack roll).

So, you can play until 3rd level with a heavily armored Fighter, and after that, if you like the concept of a lightly armored character, you can select that style, without losing anything.

That's the whole problem--there's no benefit to playing a lightly-armored fighter from levels 1-3.

You mean a fixed bonus to Will saves every x number of levels? It would need to be a bit more frequent than the Scout's feature, as by 20th level he receives a total bonus of +3 to his Fort save. Not much if we consider what has been said regarding optimized spellcasters' DCs...

The point of the scout's feature is to give him an "average" save (that goes from +1 to +9 instead of +0 to +6 or +2 to +12), so if you give the fighter more than that, you might as well just give him good Will and call it a day.

How about giving the Mettle ability earlier, and then providing an "Improved Mettle" ability at 9th level?

Good idea.

---------------------------------------

Essentially, the fighter isn't limited by his class as much as he is by the mechanics themselves. Make better feats ([Tactical] feats in particular), and the fighter gets better benefits in combat. Improve skills, and the fighter gets better benefits out of combat. Improving the fighter's chassis can only get him so far. You'd basically need to do the following:

1) Ditch the "You need a feat for that" and "Feats come in trees" mentalities. Why do you need an "Improved X" feat to remove the -4 penalty on maneuvers when there shouldn't be a penalty in the first place? Remove the -4 penalty and condense all the Improved X feats into one Improved Maneuvers feat, and you might have something worthwhile.

2) Make skills level-appropriate. Around 15th level, people should be able to Jump between planes, Tumble through walls of force, Craft weapons in an hour, and things like that; restricting skills to realism while casters are breaking the laws of physics doesn't work.

3) Improve weapons, either through the fighter himself or across the board. When casters are tossing around 10d6 evocations, fighters should at the very least be able to deal 5d6+Str+X weapon damage (and upping that to 10d6 as well would make the martial types better damage-dealers than the casters, which isn't a bad thing).

 

[Greg K]

Iron Might...doesn't really work. It's an admirable effort, but they still have the Fighters Don't Get Nice Things mentality--so many of the simplest stunts are almost impossible to pull off because to use them you need to take -10 or -20 attack penalties (for instance, to blind the target for 1d4 rounds, you take a -30 (!) penalty to the attack roll).

You are not taking into account maneuver drawbacks which are an important factor in the BOIM system. Maneuver drawbacks when added to the maneuver, reduce the to hit penalty. Furthermore, you can add multiple drawbacks to reduce the to hit penalty. For instance, the maneuver might have the following drawbacks

Full Round Action: Reduces the penalty by 5
Target gets a saving throw reduces penalty by 5 (or, maybe, give the target an opposed attack roll instead of a save)
Attack of Opportunity, Target only: reduces penalty by 5 or 10

Now, before the fighter's attack bonuses, the blinding attack has a penalty of either -15 or -10. Since it won't require a natural 20 to hit, even a first level fighter can attempt it.

If you just want to blind the target and skip doing damage, add the following to the above:
Effect only: reduces penalty by 5

Now, the attack penalty is either -10 or -5

 

[Celebrim]

I felt Iron Heroes introduced a very elegant (at least at low levels) and interesting spell casting system, but that ultimately it decided to solve the problem by making everyone (well, almost everyone) spell casters. In that, along with Bo9S, it was very much to me a preview of 4e, although really, I think that the 'everyone is a spell caster' system was pioneered by Diablo (Diablo II in particular) and now has become pretty much the default way cRPG's work.

I personally feel that if you go that way, you got to go that way 100%. You get rid of the 'fighter' class (or make it an NPC class) and you have sword mages and a drenched in the arcane setting that supports the idea of 'everyone a talent/magic-user'. The way Iron Heroes did it, which was billed as supposed to support something like Conan for example, it felt really silly to me.

In 1st edition, my experience with fighters is that at high levels they were just as useful as high level mages because mages were so fragile. High level fighters had better saves and more than twice as many hit points. A M-U was extremely powerful above level 13, but still could go down hard in a single round if taken by surprise - which pretty much never happened to high level fighters.

I really don't think the problem is overall with the fighter design as a whole. I love the fighter design. It's so elegant. I wish every class was as elegantly designed. I think the problem is the sea that the fighter finds himself swimming in at high levels.

Just as a suggestion, if you want to fix the fighter, start with the following:

1) Don't add the level of the spell to its DC to save. A 9th level spell is just as hard and no harder to save (assuming the same caster) as a 0th level spell. That does quite abit to improve the durability of a fighter right there. (Heightened Spell, under this model, increases the DC of a spell directly and becomes rather more useful than it would be otherwise.)
2) Change the fighter's bonus feat progression to the following: 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 7th, 8th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th (x2), 17th (x2), 18th, 19th (x2), 20th (x2). That's 22 feats plus their general feats, more than enough to take a speciality, improve some other aspect of their fighting and free up their general feats for useful things like Iron Will. It also give Fighters something to stack up to high level Barbarians big late game upgrades.
3) Give a fighter access to alot of high level end of feat chain feats or feats which require BAB +15 that do something other than add straight up damage. Of particular importance are abilities which thwart things which would otherwise be the ban of fighters: low will saves, walls of force, high DR, loss of a favored weapon, etc. I'm thinking things like giving a fighter armed with a iron/steel weapon SR, giving a fighter the ability to retry failed will saves if a battle is going on around him, the ability to break walls of force by shear damage, the ability to turn any weapon he holds into an enhanced weapon, the ability to ignore DR, etc. I've got a few feats like this at home, if you are interested. Some cool manuevers don't hurt, but try to make sure they are doing something other than just adding extra weapon attacks or flat bonuses to hit and damage.
4) Give the fighter two exclusive class skills - tactics and leadership (leadership can be shared with paladins) - which let them do small but useful tricks. I've got a thread around here somewhere if someone can dig it up.
3) Avoid setting up encounters/adventures which feature one big battle per day. This greatly favors spellcasters, who can then go nova without worrying about leaving spells in reserve.

 

[Aus_Snow]

I felt Iron Heroes introduced a very elegant (at least at low levels) and interesting spell casting system, but that ultimately it decided to solve the problem by making everyone (well, almost everyone) spell casters. In that, along with Bo9S, it was very much to me a preview of 4e, although really, I think that the 'everyone is a spell caster' system was pioneered by Diablo (Diablo II in particular) and now has become pretty much the default way cRPG's work.

Right with ya, up until the Diablo part. And that's not because Diablo (1996) isn't like that, of course. But there are earlier precedents within the TTRPG world itself, namely Earthdawn (1993). Possibly something before that too, but either way, Earthdawn certainly follows that pattern: every 'class' (including the 'pure' fighter-types, like Cavalryman or Archer) is actually something called an Adept; that is, a magic-user, in the literal sense.

But it suits the setting that that game comes with, to a tee. I happen to believe most fantasy settings (inc. *all* D&D settings) are not similarly compatible, on the other hand.

Anyway, your Fighter fix proposals are interesting. I'll have to give this issue some more thought.

 

[Dimitri Mazieres]

That's the whole problem--there's no benefit to playing a lightly-armored fighter from levels 1-3.

Maybe I misunderstood you but, what I said was that with the modifications I proposed you could play up to 3rd level as you want (heavy armor, etc.) and by the time you choose the fighting style, if you like the concept of a lightly armored fighter and built the character towards it (high Dex), you may choose the Light fighting style and take advantage of its abillities.

The point of the scout's feature is to give him an "average" save (that goes from +1 to +9 instead of +0 to +6 or +2 to +12), so if you give the fighter more than that, you might as well just give him good Will and call it a day.

Yes, but from what I've seen posted here and on RPG.net, an "average" save wouldn't do much more good than the standard poor save against a moderately optimized spellcaster's DCs.
I haven't done the math, but that was one of the more frequents arguments posted on the various RPG.net's threads.

3) Improve weapons, either through the fighter himself or across the board. When casters are tossing around 10d6 evocations, fighters should at the very least be able to deal 5d6+Str+X weapon damage (and upping that to 10d6 as well would make the martial types better damage-dealers than the casters, which isn't a bad thing).

That's what I tried to do with the fighting styles' abilities. Give the Fighter improved damage with whatever weapon he wields, be it by the increased damage die of the Heavy style, or the improved chance to land critical hits of the Light style.

 

[Eldritch_Lord]

You are not taking into account maneuver drawbacks which are an important factor in the BOIM system. Maneuver drawbacks when added to the maneuver, reduce the to hit penalty. Furthermore, you can add multiple drawbacks to reduce the to hit penalty. For instance, the maneuver might have the following drawbacks

Full Round Action: Reduces the penalty by 5
Target gets a saving throw reduces penalty by 5 (or, maybe, give the target an opposed attack roll instead of a save)
Attack of Opportunity, Target only: reduces penalty by 5 or 10

Now, before the fighter's attack bonuses, the blinding attack has a penalty of either -15 or -10. Since it won't require a natural 20 to hit, even a first level fighter can attempt it.

If you just want to blind the target and skip doing damage, add the following to the above:
Effect only: reduces penalty by 5

Now, the attack penalty is either -10 or -5

Maneuver drawbacks are important, but you shouldn't need to take drawbacks just to blind someone. At the very most, the majority of the effects should only start around -5 to -10; they've vastly overvalued the potency of these maneuvers.

Maybe I misunderstood you but, what I said was that with the modifications I proposed you could play up to 3rd level as you want (heavy armor, etc.) and by the time you choose the fighting style, if you like the concept of a lightly armored fighter and built the character towards it (high Dex), you may choose the Light fighting style and take advantage of its abillities.

Yes, you can choose the fighting style to take advantage of its abilities, but there's no benefit to going with light armor before that; having a character that wears heavy armor until 3rd and then switches to light doesn't really make sense.

Yes, but from what I've seen posted here and on RPG.net, an "average" save wouldn't do much more good than the standard poor save against a moderately optimized spellcaster's DCs.
I haven't done the math, but that was one of the more frequents arguments posted on the various RPG.net's threads.

Precisely my point--if you're not trying to make it an "average" save, then there's no reason not to just give him a good Will progression instead of giving a bonus which works out to the same thing. "Good Will" is easier than "Poor Will, but with bonuses that ensure that he ends up the same as if he had a good Will."

That's what I tried to do with the fighting styles' abilities. Give the Fighter improved damage with whatever weapon he wields, be it by the increased damage die of the Heavy style, or the improved chance to land critical hits of the Light style.

And that's a good approach, I'm not knocking that at all, just saying that you do need to handle that somehow for a complete fix.