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Seerow

2010-12-03, 08:57 PM

This is a repost of a homebrew resulting from months of debate on the old WotC forums several years back. It was a collaborative effort between many of us, including myself, Eyeless Blonde, Otto the Bugbear, OW4Angel, Lord Pendragon, and many others. I know at the time I stopped updating it, there was some stuff I wanted to revise, and looking back at it now, there's some things I may have redone differently, but for now I'm going to post it as it was.

Disclaimer: If you think the Fighter is perfect as is, don't bother with this topic, it's not for you. This is built on the assumption that the Fighter is lacking in something, and how best to fix what it is lacking.

The redone class is all made with the intention of giving the Fighter access to new, unique, and fun tools, and giving them more versatility and power. The Fighter is the master of many disciplines, able to switch between many different fighting styles, while being proficient in all of them in a way that no other character can be.
Fighter

The Fighter is a true savant of the field of battle. Rather than concentrating on brute strength as the barbarians do, the violent survivalist aspects of nature as a ranger, or the pursuit of higher goals as the paladins, a fighter concentrates on--and excells at--one thing: battle. A consummate master of the field, a fighter has come to understand a number of different styles of combat, each explored to a depth that no other class, even those who are considered to be first-class warriors in their own right, can hope to match.

Alignment- Any.
Hit Die- d10.
Class Skills
The fighter’s class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Balance (Dex), Bluff (Cha), Climb (Str), Craft (Int), Handle Animal (Cha), Intimidate(Cha), Jump (Str), Knowledge (geography) (Int), (Int), Knowledge (history) (Int), Listen (Wis), Profession (Wis), Ride (Dex), Spot (Wis), Survival (Wis), Swim (Str), and Tumble (Dex).
Skill Points at 1st Level- (4 + Int modifier) ×4.
Skill Points at Each Additional Level- 4 + Int modifier.

Table: Fighter
Level BAB Fort Ref Will Stances Special
1st +1 +2 +0 +0 0 Bonus feat
2nd +2 +3 +0 +0 0 Bonus feat
3rd +3 +3 +1 +1 0 Warrior's Focus (5 round recovery)
4th +4 +4 +1 +1 0 Combat Style (2 styles)
Style feat
5th +5 +4 +1 +1 1 Learning Ease, Warrior's Focus(4 Round Recovery)
6th +6 +5 +2 +2 1 Style feat
7th +7 +5 +2 +2 1 Warrior's Focus Ability
8th +8 +6 +2 +2 1 Style feat
9th +9 +6 +3 +3 1 Warrior's Focus Ability
10th +10 +7 +3 +3 1 Combat Style Mastery(4 styles), Warrior's Focus(3 round recovery)
Style feat
11th +11 +7 +3 +3 2 Style Fluidity
12th +12 +8 +4 +4 2 Style feat
13th +13 +8 +4 +4 2 Warrior's Focus Ability
14th +14 +9 +4 +4 2 Style feat
15th +15 +9 +5 +5 2 Warrior's Focus Ability, Warrior's Focus(2 Round Recovery)
16th +16 +10 +5 +5 2 Style feat
17th +17 +10 +5 +5 3 Greater Style Fluidity
18th +18 +11 +6 +6 3 Style feat
19th +19 +11 +6 +6 3 Warrior's Focus Ability
20th +20 +12 +6 +6 3 Style feat, Warrior's Focus(1 Round Recovery)

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. 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.

These bonus feats are in addition to the feat that a character of any class gets from advancing levels. Any feat a fighter takes as a bonus feat must be specified as a Fighter Bonus Feat in the feat description.

Warrior's Focus (Ex)-At third level, a fighter in combat enters a focused mental state called the Warrior's Focus. If the Fighter is in a situation that is stressful and/or dangerous enough that he would normally be unable to "take 10" on skill checks, he may spend a Swift Action to enter the Warrior's Focus. A Fighter may end this state as a non-action to mentally rebalance himself, adding a bonus equal to 1/2 his Fighter level any single saving throw he makes. If not ended voluntarily the fighter leaves the Warrior's Focus whenever the stressful situation ends. Once ouf of the Warrior's Focus, he may not regain it for 5 rounds. At 5th level, he can reenter the Warrior's Focus after 4 rounds, after 3 rounds at 10th level, after 2 rounds at 15th level, after 1 round at 20th level.

Combat Style(2 Styles) (Ex)- At level 4, the Fighter developes two distinct fighting styles, 1 and 2. Every Fighter's combat styles will be different from another Fighter's, as they persue different paths. At every level the Fighter obtains a style feat (level 4 and every 2 levels after) the Fighter gains one feat for each of his styles. The Fighter must still meet all prerequisites for a style feat he gains, including ability score and base attack bonus minimums. Previous style feats can be used to meet these requirements, but it must be from the same style. (You can not use a style 2 feat to qualify you for a feat in style 1). Additionally, the Fighter may qualify for prestige classes with style feats, however, he can only use abilities from that prestige class while using the style that contains the feat used to meet the class prerequisite.

At any given time, the Fighter will be using one, and only one, of his combat styles. The Fighter may never have feats from two different combat styles at the same time. The Fighter may switch between combat styles as a move action.

Combat Styles Chart

Feats are represented by the number of the level they are gained at.

All Styles

1
|
2
Style 1 ^ Style 2
/ \
4 4
| |
6 6
| |
8 8

Learning Ease (Ex)- At 5th level, the Fighter's training shows itself, and his dedication allows him to gain access to abilities that would normally be beyond the scope of one with his attributes. The Fighter chooses one ability score, and adds one half of his Fighter level to that ability score for the purpose of qualifying for feats. Additionally, he uses this higher effective ability score when determining his skill bonus.

The Fighter's ease of learning new tactics and tricks makes him adaptable. With a day of rigorous training, he may exchange any feat he has gained as a Fighter Bonus Feat, or Style Feat. Many Fighters take advantage of this to finely tune their combat styles to meet any foreseeable adversary.

At 10th level, the Fighter may choose another ability score, and add one fourth of his Fighter level to that ability score for the purpose of qualifying for feats.

Stances-At 5th level, and every 6 levels therafter (11th and 17th), the Fighter gains a Stance he may take. He may choose either from the list of Fighter Stances, or from any of the Martial Adept Disciplines. If he choses a Martial Adept discipline, normal restrictions of initiator level and any other prerequisites still apply. He is considered to have a full initiator level for the Fighter specific stances, but is still considered 1/2 his level for any other Discipline.

Warrior's Focus Special Ability - At 7th, 9th, 13th, 15th, and 19th level, the Fighter gains a Warrior's Focus Special Ability. These special abilities allow the Fighter to use his Warrior's Focus state in new ways, described in the abilities below.

All Warrior's Focus abilities have two parts. A focus benefit, and an expend benefit. The Fighter gains access to all focus benefits from all warrior's focus abilities that he has while under the effects of his warrior's focus. The expend part of the abilities are gained only when the Fighter expends his warrior's focus to gain use of that ability. Expending combat focus takes a swift action unless otherwise noted in the power.

Style Fluidity(Ex) - At 9th level, the Fighter's ability to shift between his combat styles improves, allowing him to switch between styles as a swift action rather than a move action. The Fighter may still switch styles as a Move Action if he wishes.

Combat Style Mastery(4 Styles) (Ex)- At level 10, the Fighter's styles become more distinct, each one diverging into two more separate styles: 1a, 1b, 2a, and 2b. At 10th level, and every 2 levels thereafter, the Fighter gains a bonus feat for each of his four Combat Styles. Each of these styles is considered to be a part of the related style. (Style1 is considered to be a part of both Style1a and Style1b for all purposes. Style2 is considered to be a part of both Style2a and Style2b for all purposes) For Clarity, the previous table has been extended to show this.

The same restrictions here apply that applied to having two combat styles. The Fighter can only use feats from the same style as prerequisites for future feats. If any feats from the styles are used to qualify for a prestige class, the Fighter must be in the style with the prerequisite feat to use any class abilities from that class.

Combat Styles Chart

Feats are represented by the level they are gained at.

All Styles

1
|
2
Style 1 / \ Style 2
/ \
4 4
| |
6 6
| |
8 8
/| |\
/ | | \
10 10 10 10
Style 1a | | | | Style 2b
12 12 12 12
| | | |
14 14 14 14
| | | |
16 16 16 16
| | | |
18 18 18 18
| | | |
20 20 20 20
| |
Style 1b Style 2a

Greater Style Fluidity(Ex)- At 17th level, the Fighter's mastery of his combat styles peaks. He gains the ability to switch between styles as a free action on his turn, and may choose to change it as an immediate action otherwise.

Fighter Stances
Air Parry
Fighter (Stance)
Level: Fighter2
Initiation Action: 1 Swift Action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: Stance
While it is active, you can deflect any missile fire directed at him, or passing through his threatened space, by making an attack roll opposing the roll of the missile. You have a stacking -5 penalty to deflect a missile per missile deflected this round. Unusually massive ranged weapons and ranged attacks generated by spell effects can’t be deflected.

Arrow Mind
Level: Fighter2
Initiation Action: 1 Swift Action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: Stance
While this stance is in effect, you do not provoke attacks of opportunity for using ranged weapons. In addition, you are considered to threaten your normal area (5 ft if you're small or medium, 10 ft if large), and may make attacks as normal against enemies provoking within that area with your ranged weapon.

Perfect Reflexes
Level: Fighter4
Initiation Action: 1 Swift Action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: Stance
While in this stance, the fighter may make a number of extra attacks of opportunity per round equal to his initiator level.

Peerless Sniper
Level: Fighter4
Initiation Action: 1 Swift Action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: Stance
While in this stance, all penalties for Range Increments are halved, as are spot penalties for distance. Additionally, you may fire any ranged weapon 5 increments further than normal. Additionally, you are able to find the weak points in most objects. When use a ranged weapon against an object, you may ignore 2 points of hardness per initiator level of an object, and deal full damage even if you're using a piercing weapon.

Weapon Versatility
Level: Fighter4
Initiation Action: 1 Swift Action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: Stance
While in this stance, the fighter may apply his Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, and Weapon Supremacy Feats to any weapon he is proficient with

Dreadnaught Fortress
Level: Fighter6
Initiation Action: 1 Swift Action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: Stance
With this stance the initiator becomes a true master of his surrounding terrain. As long as he maintains this stance, his reach increases as if he were one size larger. In addition, the area within his reach becomes difficult terrain for all his enemies. This ability affects all enemies the fighter is capable of reliably affecting: it even effects flying creatures and incorporeal creatures (if the fighter has a Ghost Touch weapon).

Master of Precision
Level: Fighter6
Initiation Action: 1 Swift Action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: Stance
While in this stance, you add your dexterity to damage with all ranged weapons within one range increment, and all melee weapons held in one hand. Additionally, any time an enemy has an ability that would negate your Damage (cover, deflect arrows, Starmantle Cloak, etc) the target must make a reflex save DC10+1/2Initiator Level+Dexterity Modifier, or be affected normally.

Arcarnum Wall
Level: Fighter8
Initiation Action: 1 Swift Action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: Stance
While using this stance, you can block any lines of effect that pass through his space or threatened space(effects can still target him directly however). Any spells blocked in this way affect the Fighter as if they were targeted at him instead. The Tactical Fighter cannot use this ability if he is unable to make attacks of opportunity.

Target to the Center
Fighter (Stance)
Level: Fighter8
Initiation Action: 1 Swift Action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: Stance
While in this stance, every time you miss a ranged attack because of concealment, you can reroll your miss chance percentile roll one time to see if you actually hit.

In addition, you automatically know the location (the correct square) of every enemy within one range increment, provided you have spotted them at least once in the current encounter. This Stance by itself does not negate cover or concealment, including the benefits of total cover or the 50% miss chance for any target who has total concealment.

Finally, any time you attack a target who has total cover or concealment relative to you, they are caught flat-footed by your attacks.

Warrior's Focus Special Abilities
Active Assault
Focus: With this ability a fighter can flawlessly place himself where he is most needed in combat. So long as he maintains his Warrior's Focus, he may take a 5-foot step as an immediate action. This is in addition to any other movement he takes during his turn, even another 5-foot step.

Expend: You may expend your focus as an immediate action to take a full move action.

Adapt to Opponent
Focus: The Fighter chooses one opponent, for each round a fighter is engaged in combat with an opponent, or observes an opponent fighting, he gains cumulative +1 circumstance bonus on attack rolls, damage rolls, and AC against that opponent until the end of encounter. This bonus cannot exceed +1 per 3 fighter levels.

Expend: Double the bonus against the target for the next 3 rounds.

Blitzkrieg
Focus: The Fighter can use his ranged attacks to distract an enemy from an approaching melee attacker. While maintaining his Warrior's Focus, whenever you hit an enemy with a ranged attack, that enemy is considered flanked by you for the purpose of adjudicating your allies' melee attacks. This flanked condition lasts until either the enemy is attacked by one of your allies or until the start of your next turn, whichever comes first.

Expend: The Fighter can expend his Focus as part of an attack action, if the attack hits, the target is treated as staggered for 1d6 rounds.

Charging Assault
Benefit: While maintaining his Warrior's Focus, the Fighter can charge or run over difficult terrain, and can make up to one 90-degree turn during a charge or run action.

Expend: The Fighter can expend his focus as a free action while charging to make a full attack at the end of the charge.

Clip His Wings
Focus: The Fighter can aim his ranged weapon at a flying creature in an attempt to force it to land. This allows the Fighter to make a ranged Trip attack against any flying creatures with less than perfect maneuverability. If the attack is successful, the creature must make a Ref save instead of a Str check, with a DC equal to the attack roll. The creature receives a +4 to this save for every step his maneuverability is above Clumsy. Failure means the creature plunges downward a number of feet equal to double his speed, falling damage applied as normal.

Expend: The fighter may attempt to trip even a target with perfect maneuverability, and the target falls at 3 times their normal speed.

Climb the Mountain
Prerequisite: BAB +15
Focus: The Fighter has become especially good at grappling large opponents. While maintaining his Warrior's Focus, any creature using Crush, Snatch, or any other ability that automatically does damage to a grappled creature does not automatically damage the Fighter. Instead they must win an opposed Grapple check to do the damage. The action type for the damaging ability is unchanged. The Fighter in this state is an especially distracting opponent; any creature who grapples the Fighter while attempting to be treated as not being in a grapple with the Fighter--for instance, with the Improved Grab or Swallow Whole feats--takes a -2 penalty on attacks, saves, ability checks, skill checks and weapon damage rolls so long as he continues to grapple the Fighter.

Expend: The Fighter eliminates both his and a single opponent's size modifiers in any opposed grapple checks against that opponent for the next 3 turns.

Combat Foil
Focus: An enemy attacked by the Fighter takes a -5 penalty to all concentration checks per successful attack until the start of the Fighter's next turn.

Expend: The Fighter attempts to foil an enemy's action, as an immediate action. To foil, a fighter must hit with a melee touch attack or, providing he has a ranged weapon available, ranged touch attack within the ranged weapon's first range increment. A Fighter may not foil a move or charge action that began out of range.
If the touch attack is successful, the target is entitled to either a Ref save or a Concentration check, whichever he chooses, with a DC equal to the fighter's attack roll. If the check fails, the foiled action is wasted, and any spell slots, limited ability uses, or the like used to power it are expended.

Cover Fire
Focus: While maintaining his Warrior's Focus the Fighter gains the ability to use ranged attacks to keep his foes pinned down and use cover to it's maximum advantage. Any foe the Fighter attacks with a ranged weapon this round counts the Fighter as being in cover, if the Fighter is already in cover he counts as being in improved cover, and if the fighter is already in improved cover he counts as having total cover.

Expend: The Fighter can expend his Focus to give the defensive benefits of this ability to all allies within 30' until the beginning of his next turn

Dance of the Weave
Prerequisite: BAB+19, Master of Arms
Focus: The Fighter may make an attack of opportunity to nulify a spell or spell-like ability that is targetting him. This attack of opportunity is made, rather than as a normal attack, as an opposed check. The Fighter's BAB plus his Weapon's Enhancement Bonus against the Caster's Caster Level.

Expend: The Fighter can expend his focus as a free action to reflect the attacked spell back onto the caster, as if affected by Spell Turning.

Double Weapon Master
Prerquisites: Two Weapon Mastery, Exotic Weapon Proficiency(Any Double Weapon)
Focus: While maintaining his Warrior's Focus, the Fighter weilding a double weapon gains an extra attack at highest attack bonus when making an attack as a standard action.

Expend: As a standard action, make one attack with each end of your weapon against every enemy adjacent to you, at your highest base attack bonus -2.

Empty Hand Combat
Prerequisites: Improved Trip or Improved Disarm, Improved Unarmed Strike
Benefit: The Fighter's unarmed attacks deal damage as though he were a Monk of 1/2 his Fighter level.
Focus: The Fighter can fight more effectively while unarmed. If he has the Improved Trip feat, he can no longer be counter-tripped if he fails an unarmed Trip attempt. If he has the Improved Disarm feat and has both hands free, his unarmed strike counts as a two-handed weapon for the purposes of disarming an opponent.

Expend: Make an unarmed Trip or Disarm attempt against all opponents within reach as a standard action, with a -4 on the melee touch attack portion of the attempt.

Heavy Armor Supremacy
Prerequisites: Armor Mastery
Focus: While you are in your Warrior's Focus, you gain DR/- equal to 1/4 your fighter level.

Expend: Negate the physical damage of one hit, as if for that hit you had infinite DR for that one hit. This ability can be used as an immediate action, after the attack roll, but before damage is calculated. Energy and other nonphysical damage (stat damage, etc) are not affected, as per normal rules for DR.

Height of War
Focus: The warrior becomes immune to fear effects.

Expend: As a free action, reroll any roll you choose chooses. Use of this ability must be announced before the result of the first roll is declared.

Hold the High Ground
Focus: With this ability the fighter has become an expert at receiving and holding onto the benefits of a superior position. The fighter now receives the benefits of being on higher ground by default, and only loses them when his foe has the higher ground.

Expend: The Fighter can force an enemy into a tactically poor position. When the fighter has higher ground than his opponent, he can expend his Warrior's Focus as part of a full attack action. During this full attack, each time the fighter hits an enemy he can, in addition to doing damage, force the enemy to move 5ft, as if the fighter has successfully Bull Rushed him. The Fighter may choose to move into the space the target previously occupied. The enemy provokes attacks of opprotunity for this movement, but not from the fighter."

Light Armor Supremacy
Prerequisites: Master of Armor
Focus: While under the effects of your Warrior's Focus and wearing light armor, you gain an insight bonus to armor class equal to one fourth your Fighter Level, and increase the max dex of the armor by 1/6th of your Fighter level.

Expend: You may expend your Warrior's Focus as an immediate action to avoid a single attack, or succeed on a single reflex save.

Master of Armor
Focus: While under the effect of Warrior's Focus, your armor gains an enhancement bonus to AC equal to one fourth your Fighter Level.

Expend: Switch out points of enhancement bonus to gain armor enhancements for a number of rounds equal to your Fighter Level. Any remaining enhancement bonus remains active, even outside of your warriors focus, for the same amount of time. Reentering Warrior's Focus does not gain you an additional Enhancement bonus.

Quality Point Cost
Enhancement bonus 1*
Fortification, light 1
Slick / Shadow / Silent moves 0.5 each **
Spell resistance (= fighter level) 1
Slick / Shadow / Silent moves, improved 1 each
Elemental resistance (per element) 1
Slick / Shadow / Silent moves, greater 2 each
Elemental resistance, improved (per element) 2
Fortification, moderate 3
Spell resistance (= fighter level +5) 3
Elemental resistance, greater (per element) 4
Spell resistance (= fighter level +10) 4
Fortification, heavy 5
Spell resistance (= fighter level +13) 5
Note that these are just enhancements available from the PHB, and the DM is encouraged to find other suitable enhancements from any suplement he uses. Particularly any enhancements that seem to denote skill more than an overtly magical effect

Master of Arms
Focus: While under the effect of Warrior's Focus, your weapons gain an enhancement bonus equal to one fourth your Fighter Level.

Expend: Switch out points of enhancement bonus to gain armor enhancements for a number of rounds equal to your Fighter Level. Any remaining enhancement bonus remains active, even outside of your warriors focus, for the same amount of time. Reentering Warrior's Focus does not gain you an additional Enhancement bonus.

Quality Point Cost
Enhancement bonus 1*
Bane 1
Defending 1
Ghost Touch 1
Keen 1
Ki Focus 1
Mighty Cleaving 1
Throwing 1
Wounding 2
Speed 3
Vorpal 5
Note that these are just enhancements available from the PHB, and the DM is encouraged to find other suitable enhancements from any suplement he uses. Particularly any enhancements that seem to denote skill more than an overtly magical effect

Master of Improvisation
Benefit: A Fighter with this ability can improvise weapons quickly and easily. In addition to being able to pick up anything handy on the battlefield and immediately use it as an improvised simple weapon*, he can also, with 8 rounds of work and a successful DC 15 Craft check, gather scraps from the battlefield together to make an improvised martial weapon. This Craft DC increases by 2 points for every round taken off the preparation (minimum 1 round), and by 5 points if improvising an exotic weapon. Like improvised simple weapons, the improvised martial/exotic weapon mimics the weapon characteristics of a specific martial or exotic weapon which the Fighter chooses at the time he creates it.

Focus: While maintaining his Warrior's Focus, the Fighter gains Proficiency with his simple or martial improvised weapons, and can use them without the normal -4 penalty. If he has proficiency with a particular exotic weapon, he also gains proficiency with an exotic improvised weapon that mimics its weapon characteristics.

Expend: The Fighter throws an improvised weapon as a standard action, doing 1d6 of weapon damage per 2 Fighter levels, plus strength modifier on a successful ranged attack roll. If the weapon was an improvised martial weapon (see above), the weapon damage dealt is 1d6 per Fighter level, plus 3 times strength modifier. An improvised martial weapon thrown in this manner is unusable afterward. In either case, half the weapon damage dealt is considered precision damage, like the rogue's Sneak Attack dice, creatures immune to such damage take half damage.

Master Rider
Focus: The fighter gains the ability to drive his mount to perform better in combat as a move action. To successfully drive a mount, the Fighter must make a Ride check with a DC of 20+the mount's total Hit Dice. If the fighter has trained the animal (taught it at least one trick), he receives a +10 bonus on this skill check.

While being Driven, the mount receives the following benefits:
-temporary HP equal to the check result
-a +2 morale bonus to all saves and a 10-ft enhancement bonus to speed for every 4 ranks the Fighter has in the Handle Animal skill.
-the mount uses his own HD total or the fighter's for determining the effect of spells that are Hit Dice dependant, whichever is greater.

The effects last for a number of rounds equal to 5+the animal's Con modifier, after which it is fatigued (-2 penalty to Strength, -2 penalty to Dexterity, can’t charge or run) for 5 rounds. An animal cannot be normally be affected with a second use of this ability while Fatigued.

Expend: The Fighter can drive even a mount no matter what state it is in. After being Driven while fatigued, the animal is Exhausted (moves at half speed and takes a -6 penalty to Strength and Dexterity).

Medium Armor Supremacy
Prerequisites: Master of Armor
Focus: While under the effects of Warrior's Focus and wearing medium armor, the fighter does not suffer movement penalties due to his armor, and he adds his Armor bonus to AC to touch attacks, up to a maximum equal to his Fighter Level.

Expend: As an immediate action reduce all damage taken for the rest of the round by 50%, and convert the damage from the next attack taken into subdual damage.

Reflexive Style
Focus: The fighter may opt gain the benefits of a [Fighter] feat he does not have that he qualifies for when he enters Warrior's Focus. This feat lasts for 4 rounds, or until the warrior reenters his Warrior's Focus, at which time he chooses a different feat.

Expend: The fighter may switch his combat styles, and choose a new feat feat that he may use with this combat style. A bonus feat gained in this way lasts until the end of the encounter. This may be used as an immediate action. At 17th level this power becomes a free action.

Relentless Assault
Focus: With this ability, a fighter's iterative attacks become more accurate. So long as he maintains his Warrior's Focus, the fighter's iterative attacks are made as successive -3 penalties, rather than the normal -5. This does not give the fighter any more iterative attacks than he would normally have. For example, a fighter who normally makes attacks at +17/+12/+7/+2 would now make attacks at +17/+14/+11/+8.

Expend: The fighter can end his Warrior's Focus state as part of a full attack action to make all of his iterative attacks at his highest BAB for that round. The above Fighter in this case would make attacks at +17/+17/+17/+17. Expending Warrior's Focus in this fashion is especially exhausting; the fighter's Warrior's Focus recovery time is increased by 1 round

Shield Ally:
Focus: While in the Warrior's Focus, a fighter can share his shield bonus to AC with an ally within his reach. As long as both the fighter and the ally are 5 feet away, the fighter shares shield bonus to the ally against opponent threatened by fighter. The fighter's ally does not suffer any ill affects of using a shield, such as an armor check penalty or arcane spell failure. A fighter may shield a number of allies in this manner equal to 1/4 his fighter level.

Expend: Completely take the damage from one attack against an ally the Fighter is sharing his AC with. Use of this ability must be declared after the attack hits, but before damage is rolled.

Shield Evasion
Focus: While in the Warrior's Focus, and wielding a large or tower shield, a fighter gains the evasion ability, as the Rogue special ability except it works with heavy armor. In addition, whenever a fighter makes a Reflex save to which evasion applies, he gains circumstance bonus on that save equal to his shield bonus to AC.

Expend: A Fighter may expend his Warrior's Focus as an immediate action to end one status effect currently on him.

Suppressive Fire
Focus: The Fighter can aim his attacks in an attempt to force his opponent to drop prone. As a standard action, the Fighter can target a single enemy with an attack. The enemy has a choice: to drop prone as a free action and automatically evade the attack, or remain upright and take damage as if the Fighter had landed with a critical hit. Enemies who are already prone cannot be targeted by this ability.

Expend: The Fighter unload a hail of arrows or similar ammunition over an area, forcing all combatants in the area to seek cover or take damage. To use this effect the Fighter takes a full-round action and chooses a cone-shaped area, with a range of his bow's first range increment. Until the Fighter's next turn, all creatures who end their turn in the area and don't have total cover relative to the Fighter take damage as if the Fighter had hit them with half the total number of ranged attacks he can make in a full attack (damage rolled once, on the Fighter's turn). Creatures affected by this ability are entitled to a Reflex save for half damage, DC equal to 10 plus 5 times his total number of attacks.This action uses a number of arrows equal to twice his total number of attacks.

Swashbuckling Tactics
Prerequisite: Dodge, Mobility, Elusive Target
Focus: While using a one-handed or light weapon in one hand and carrying nothing in the other, the Fighter can turn his body away from attacks, reducing his profile and openness to attack. Against the specific opponent to which the Fighter applies his Dodge feat, the Fighter also has soft cover (+4 to AC) and the equivalent of light fortification (a 25% chance of negating a critical hit or sneak attack). Unlike the normal rules for cover, this form cover does not provide the Fighter the conditions needed to Hide, but both the fortification and the soft cover stack with any magical, racial, or other similar abilities.

Expend: The Fighter can expend his focus as a swift action to put his whole weight into an all-out blitz. Until his next turn, the Fighter doubles the number of attacks made with his light or one-handed weapon against the opponent designated by his Dodge feat, but in exchange he gives up his Dex to AC against that opponent. A Fighter using this ability can receive extra attacks from the Haste spell and similar magical effects, but such attacks are not doubled by this ability. If at least half of the Fighter's attacks hit during this full attack, the target must make a Fortitude Save DC10+1/2 Fighter Level+Your Dex mod, or be dazed until the end of the Fighter's next turn.

Swift Strike
Focus: While in the Warrior's Focus, whenever a fighter uses standard action to make an attack, he can make two attacks at his highest attack bonus instead.
Expend: Take a full attack action as a standard action.

Tactical Genius
Prerequisites: BAB+11
Focus: While in the Warrior's Focus, a Fighter posessing any of the following feats can add one-half his total Fighter level as a bonus to the indicated ability: Combat Casting, Improved Bull Rush, Improved Disarm, Improved Grapple, Improved Initiative, Improved Trip, Improved Overrun, Improved Sunder, Mobility, Run (bonus to Jump checks).

Expend: The Fighter may expend his Warrior's Focus to increase this bonus to his full Fighter level for one round, and effectively increase his size category by 1 for purposes of Bull Rush, Disarm, Grapple, Sunder, Overrun, and Tripping.

Take the High Ground
Prerequisite: Hold the High Ground
Focus: With this ability the fighter receives a +2 bonus for being on higher ground than his opponent, rather than the normal +1. This bonus increases by +1 for every additional 6 ranks the fighter has in Balance or Climb (+3 when the fighter has 12 ranks in Balance and Climb, +4 when the fighter has 18 ranks in both skills, and so on.).

Expend: You can expend your focus as a part of an standard attack, to knock the target back one square per 4 Fighter levels, you may opt to move into any of the squares they were pushed through as a part of this attack.

True Threat
Focus:: A Fighter makes himself a presence to be feared on the battlefield. While under the effects of Warrior's Focus, he invokes dread in his enemies, and all enemies within 60' lose all morale bonuses to attack or damage.

Expend: Make an intimidate check to force any single oponent within 60ft to attack him. The targeted creature must make a modified level check (adding his wisdom bonus to his HD for the check) against your intimidate check. If the creatre fails this check, it must target the Fighter exclusively, or flee for 2d6 rounds. The targetted creature may still fight intelligently, a spellcaster may target others with an area of effect spell, a melee warrior can still use a whirlwind attack, etc, however the enemy must be attacking the Fighter in some way at all times. The creature may retry its saving throw at the end of each round at the end of its turn (after moving and/or attacking the Fighter). Any creature that resists your True Threat becomes immune to it for 24 hours. Mindless and dominated creatures are unaffected by this ability.

Two Weapon Mastery
Prerequisites: Two Weapon Fighting, BAB+11
Focus: While maintaining his Warrior's Focus, the Fighter reduces his penalties from Two Weapon Fighting by 1 per 5 Fighter levels. (to a maximum of 0), and can make an offhand attack when making a standard action attack.

Expend: The Fighter may expend his Warrior's Focus as a free action after hitting a target with both of his weapons in one turn. The target is inflicted with ongoing damage equal to one hit from their mainhand weapon at the start of each turn, this effect may be ended with a fortitude saving throw, with a DC equal to 10+1/2 fighter level+the Fighter's dexterity modifier, made at the end of their turn.

New Feats

Master Trainer [General]
Prerequisites: Master Rider Warrior's Focus ability or Wild Empathy, Handle Animal 12 ranks, Knowledge(Nature) 5 ranks

Benefit: With this feat a character has mastered advanced training methods for animals and other unintelligent beasts. You can use the Handle Animal skill to train an animal to be tougher than normal. Unlike other training methods, this one costs significant amounts of money on expensive training aides and personal effort (in the form of XP), but can provide uniquely powerful benefits.

Added animal Hit Die are the same as the bonus hit die that animal companions receive: d8 hit die, with BAB and base save progression, feats every three hit die and all the other normal benefits. Trainers may at their discretion give their animals additional abilities, according to the table below.
Special Abilities

Special Ability* Price Modifier**
------------------------------------------------------
Formidability +1
Speed +1
Devotion +1
Multiattack +1
Link +1
Evasion +1
Improved Evasion*** +1
Mettle +2
Size increase +2

*-Generally a special ability can only be taken once per animal.
See descriptions for details.
**-Add to number of extra hit die to determine total
number of hit die equivalents added to the animal.
***-Requires Evasion

Special abilities explained below.

There is an additional prerequisite: no trainer may train an animal to have more total Hit Die equivalents than their own character level minus the animal's normal Hit Die.

The DC for training an animal is 20+the total Hit Die equivalents. The cost for training an animal in this way is 2,500gp and 200XP per added Hit Die equivalent. Unlike other training methods, training an animal in this way requires effort and conditions similar to those for creating magic items. In particular, two weeks are required per hit die or hit die equivalent to be added of undivided attention, eight hours per day, as if the character were creating a magic item.

As with other uses of Handle Animal, Master Trainers can use this skill on a creature with an Intelligence score of 1 or 2 that is not an animal. Training such creatures has an additional requirement of 5 ranks in Knowledge(Arcana) for non-outsider creatures or 5 ranks in Knowledge(the planes) for outsiders. In addition, the DC of any such check increases by 5, and the time, GP cost and XP cost all double. Added Hit Die are appropriate for the creature's type.

Special ability descriptions
Formidability - The animal receives a +2 to Str and Dex, and a +3 to Natural Armor. This ability can be taken once per five Hit DIe equivalents added to the animal.
Speed - The animal's base speed increases by 20ft and it gains the Run feat. If the animal already possesses the Run feat he gains the ability to run or charge through difficult terrain and can one 90-degree turn during a run or charge.
Devotion/Multiattack/Link - Per the Druid's Animal Companion rules
Evasion/Improved Evasion/Mettle - I shouldn't need to explain these.
Size increase - Per the normal rules for monster size increases.

Master Weaponsmith
Prerequisites: Focus ability: Master of Arms, Craft(Weaponsmithing, Bowmaking): one 10 ranks, the other 5 ranks
Benefit: The character's superior skill and understanding of weapons allows him to forge magic weapons and armor, even if he is not a spellcaster and does not know the proper spells. He can substitute a Craft(Weaponsmithing) check (DC 15+spell level) when making a melee weapon or a Craft(Bowmaking) check (DC 15+spell level) in place of a required spell he doesn't know or can't cast.

If the check succeeds, the character can create the weapon as if he had cast the required spell on each day of construction. If it fails, he can try again each day until the item is complete. If he comes to the end of the crafting time and he has still not successfully emulated one of the powers, he cannot complete the weapon. He does not expend the XP or GP costs for making the item; his progress is simply arrested. He cannot retry this Craft check for that spell until he gains a new level.

Master Armorsmith
Prerequisites: Focus ability: Master of Armor, Craft(Armorsmithing): 10 ranks, Craft(Leatherworking) 5 ranks
Benefit: The character's superior skill and understanding of armor allows him to forge magic armor, even if he is not a spellcaster and does not know the proper spells. He can substitute a Craft(Armorsmithing) check (DC 15+spell level) when making armor or shields in place of a required spell he doesn't know or can't cast.

If the check succeeds, the character can create the armor or shield as if he had cast the required spell on each day of construction. If it fails, he can try again each day until the item is complete. If he comes to the end of the crafting time and he has still not successfully emulated one of the powers, he cannot complete the item. He does not expend the XP or GP costs for making the item; his progress is simply arrested. He cannot retry this Craft check for that spell until he gains a new level.

Dual Focus Initiate [Combat Form] [Fighter]
Prerequisites: Combat Focus, Warrior's Focus
Benefit: Whenever you expend your Combat Focus, you can regain it after a number of rounds equal to the time it would take to regain Warrior's Focus. While you retain Combat Focus, you regain Warrior's Focus one round faster than normal (minimum 1 round recovery time).
Normal: Combat Focus can only be gained once per encounter.
Special: A Fighter can select Dual Focus as one of his bonus feats.

Dual Focus Adept [Combat Form] [Fighter]
Prerequisites: Combat Focus, Dual Focus Initiate, at least two other Combat Form feats, Warrior's Focus, at least two Warrior's Focus abilities.
Benefit: You have increased your abilities in both Combat Focus and Warrior's Focus, and have gained true flexibility with them. You can choose to expend your Combat Focus to activate one of your Warrior's Focus abilities. Alternatively, you can expend your Warrior's Focus to activate a Combat Form ability.
Normal: Combat Focus can normally only be expended to activate a Combat Form ability, and Warrior's Focus can normally only be expended to activate a Warrior's Focus ability.
Special: A Fighter can select Dual Focus as one of his bonus feats.

Dual Focus Mastery [Combat Form] [Fighter]
Prerequisites: Combat Focus, Dual Focus Initiate, Dual Focus Adept, at least three other Combat Form feats, Warrior's Focus, at least three Warrior's Focus abilities.
Benefit: You have mastered both Combat Focus and Warrior's Focus, and are able to combine the two into a greater whole. Whenever you have Combat Focus, you are treated as maintaining Warrior's Focus for the purposes of any Warrior's Focus abilities you may have. When you have Warrior's Focus, you are treated as having Combat Focus for the purpose of any Combat Form feats.
Special: A Fighter can select Dual Focus as one of his bonus feats.

Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Quarterstaff) [General] [Fighter]
Taken as an exotic weapon proficiency, you gain the following benefits to using a quarterstaff.

You can wield a quarterstaff as a two-handed weapon. As a two-handed weapon, it has reach, so you can strike opponents 10 feet away with it. In addition, unlike most other weapons with reach, it can be used against an adjacent foe. You do not gain this benefit while using the quarterstaff as a double weapon.

You can make trip attacks with the staff. Unlike most trip attempts, the opponent never receives an opportunity to trip you in return, so you never need to drop your weapon.

When using a staff you get a +2 bonus on opposed attack rolls made to disarm an opponent (including the roll to keep from being disarmed if the attack fails).

Improved Learning Ease [Fighter]
Prerequisite: Fighter level 10
Benefit: You may choose one additional ability score to add one fourth of your Fighter level to for determining feat eligibility and skill bonuses
Special: This feat may be taken more than once.

Precision Strike
Prerequisites: Dex 13, BAB+2
Benefit: On your action, before making attack rolls for a round, you may choose to subtract a number from all melee attack rolls. For every 2 points you subtract from your attack rolls, you gain +1d6 damage on every attack this round. The number subtracted may not exceed your base attack bonus. The penalty on attacks and bonus on damage apply until your next turn.

gkathellar

2010-12-03, 09:39 PM

A fighter fix? Is it Friday already?

D10 hit die, good fort save, cool. Skills look good. I agree that fighters should actually be reasonably good at athletic/warrior type things.

Might want to put give it something else at first and second levels - at least if you're using ToB alongside this. One bonus feat < three maneuvers and battle clarity. Also, fighters should definitely get the warblade's weapon aptitude. It's built on terrible feats, mind, but it's a cute trick.

Warrior's focus is basically useless when you first get it: it amounts to +1 to one save once per encounter. Give it something to do at 3rd level - a warrior's focus ability wouldn't be broken.

Combat Styles ... if I understand correctly, you get to choose from two sets of bonus feats, and switch between which one you're using? That's kind of cool, actually, though it doesn't alleviate many problems on its own. Learning Ease is likewise super cool, but lacks many significant immediate benefits. Still, at the same level you gain a stance, so that's a little better.

Warrior's focus abilities are pretty cool.

Combat Style Mastery is an interesting idea. Increasing feat density is a nice trick. Again, not sure it provides quite as huge a bonus as you might think, but it's still cool.

Style fluidity and greater style fluidity both seem like fun touches.

Overall, I'm not sure it's the most powerful fighter fix, but it is a pretty cool one. It probably won't measure up to ToB, but it puts the fighter solidly in Tier Four, possibly even at its upper end. Fighters still aren't the strongest class around, but they'll be reasonably effective and much more versatile.

Seerow

2010-12-03, 09:54 PM

A fighter fix? Is it Friday already?

Are they still that common? :x

Also bear in mind like I said at the start of the post, this was a long term collaborative effort from a few years ago. It had appeared the constant forum updates ate it, but I happened across a copy on a archive site, so figured it was worth bringing back into life.

Might want to put give it something else at first and second levels - at least if you're using ToB alongside this. One bonus feat < three maneuvers and battle clarity. Also, fighters should definitely get the warblade's weapon aptitude. It's built on terrible feats, mind, but it's a cute trick.

The idea was that Fighter 2 is already a pretty powerful dip, and even up until 4, the class is decent. A lot of the neater features are backloaded, or at least kick in after that standard cutoff.

The Warblade's Weapon Aptitude may be worth considering though.

Warrior's focus is basically useless when you first get it: it amounts to +1 to one save once per encounter. Give it something to do at 3rd level - a warrior's focus ability wouldn't be broken.

That's intended. If you only go up to Fighter 3, you should get something, but nothing amazing. That said, being able to take 10 on most skills mid combat can be situationally useful.

Once you get into the Warrior Focus special abilities at level 7 though, that focus becomes very powerful very quickly. Take a look at the warrior's focus powers in the spoiler, check out the passive effects, and bear in mind that the warrior keeps all passive effects of each of their focus abilities until the focus is expended. The focus may be expended for either the unique ability of one of the focus powers, or for that save bonus.

Honestly after looking over some of those powers after a few years away from it, I felt it might even be too much. I'd love to have someone who's not as rusty as I am take a hard look at those powers to see how strong they are.

Combat Styles ... if I understand correctly, you get to choose from two sets of bonus feats, and switch between which one you're using? That's kind of cool, actually, though it doesn't alleviate many problems on its own. Learning Ease is likewise super cool, but lacks many significant immediate benefits. Still, at the same level you gain a stance, so that's a little better.

Yeah, you have the main idea behind combat styles. The point isn't to give more power, it's to create a lot more diversity. The Fighter by 20th level has 32 bonus feats, but only 11 active at any given time. The overall power level doesn't increase, and it's relatively hard to break, but you can go very deep into various combat styles, making it easier for the fighter to adapt to situations, as opposed to the live fighter being stuck in a specific niche.

Overall, I'm not sure it's the most powerful fighter fix, but it is a pretty cool one. It probably won't measure up to ToB, but it puts the fighter solidly in Tier Four, possibly even at its upper end. Fighters still aren't the strongest class around, but they'll be reasonably effective and much more versatile.

I personally think it should be at least as strong as Tome of Battle characters, and likely any fighter built will be far more versatile (which is the main point).

The biggest power gain here is the combat focus abilities and the fighter specific stances. A lot of them provide unique effects that are fairly powerful. Looking back on them now some of them seem like they may be over the top, but I may be too far removed from the D&D metagame to have a good idea of what's too strong.

gkathellar

2010-12-03, 09:59 PM

That's intended. If you only go up to Fighter 3, you should get something, but nothing amazing. That said, being able to take 10 on most skills mid combat can be situationally useful.

It doesn't actually say you can take 10 on skills while focused, only that you can only initiate focus in situations where you wouldn't be able to take 10 on skills. Fix that, and level 3 should be fine as is.

Seerow

2010-12-03, 10:01 PM

It doesn't actually say you can take 10 on skills while focused, only that you can only initiate focus in situations where you wouldn't be able to take 10 on skills. Fix that, and level 3 should be fine as is.

Fair enough, any commentary on the stances/powers?

Also, as an aside, you mentioned a tier. I've seen mention of that around, and I can only assume that since I stopped paying attention CharOp came up with a tier classification for power of various classes. Is there a link I can go to for the details on that?

Lord_Gareth

2010-12-03, 10:05 PM

Also, as an aside, you mentioned a tier. I've seen mention of that around, and I can only assume that since I stopped paying attention CharOp came up with a tier classification for power of various classes. Is there a link I can go to for the details on that?

Well, the tier system is only partially a measure of power, and more accurately measures versatility. Tier 1 classes can do anything - wizard, CoDZilla, artificer, et cetera. They can casually reshape the setting. Less versatility (and thusly, implied power to shape the setting) is available to lower tiers.

Seerow

2010-12-03, 10:36 PM

Well, the tier system is only partially a measure of power, and more accurately measures versatility. Tier 1 classes can do anything - wizard, CoDZilla, artificer, et cetera. They can casually reshape the setting. Less versatility (and thusly, implied power to shape the setting) is available to lower tiers.

Yeah I managed to find it with a little help from Google. Looking at it, I'd say this would have to fall under tier 3. I'd argue this is both more flexible and powerful than a core barbarian or rogue (the classes from that tier I'm most familiar with), by a pretty fair margin.

Though I could see the argument for it being comparable to a Warmage, I think the stances and Focus abilities give it enough utility to overtake the Warmage.

Lord_Gareth

2010-12-03, 10:39 PM

Yeah I managed to find it with a little help from Google. Looking at it, I'd say this would have to fall under tier 3. I'd argue this is both more flexible and powerful than a core barbarian or rogue (the classes from that tier I'm most familiar with), by a pretty fair margin.

Though I could see the argument for it being comparable to a Warmage, I think the stances and Focus abilities give it enough utility to overtake the Warmage.

The problem is that it's limited in its capacity to do anything but fight. A Crusader, Swordsage, or Warblade can do lots of things besides fight - but they're best at fighting. THAT is what T3 is.

Also, depending on build, Rogue is often T3. See: UMD

gkathellar

2010-12-03, 10:51 PM

And while it has some unique tricks, it's not capable of pulling the kind of crazy stunts that put a lot of Tier 3 classes where they are. It has 4-5 powers and a mess of bonus feats, and it can full attack with the best of them. That's basically it.

Seerow

2010-12-03, 10:59 PM

The problem is that it's limited in its capacity to do anything but fight. A Crusader, Swordsage, or Warblade can do lots of things besides fight - but they're best at fighting. THAT is what T3 is.

Also, depending on build, Rogue is often T3. See: UMD

Maybe my memory is just really bad, but what sorts of things do Martial Adepts have going on outside of combat? I don't recall Warblade having much of anything, for one. Similarly Psiwarrior's power list is almost exclusively combat abilities, and its skills aren't particularly extensive.

Not that I'm particularly upset you think that even with all that added the Fighter is still underpowered. I just think it's got a lot of flexibility going for it that pushes it out of the same league as the likes of a Barbarian, Warlock, scout, etc.

And if UMD is enough to make a rogue into t3, it's not like this Fighter has to use any of his normal leveling feats on combat related stuff, he could easily afford to burn a feat for Skill Training (UMD). (Not that that is a particularly strong selling point, but the option is there if UMD is just that strong :/)

Seerow

2010-12-04, 10:06 PM

Really nobody wants to educate me as to what out of combat abilities a Warblade has that makes it so much better than this fighter?

Epsilon Rose

2010-12-04, 11:12 PM

Seerow

2010-12-04, 11:26 PM

You might want to speed up learning ease, as it is it's almost useless at higher levels. I say this since if you want to change a feat at the bottom of the tree you'll have to go down 1 or more branches changing things out so you don't break anything (unless you're going to let them keep feats that they don't have the prereqs for, which seems like a bad idea) and then back up picking what they actually want. At later levels this could take a month maybe two, during most of which you won't have the feats you need and a lot of campaigns don't afford players that kind of down time on a regular basis.

That's a fair point. The time constraint put on it was to avoid retraining an entire tree mid dungeon or something silly, but I can see where the time limit on it currently could be prohibitive.

On the other hand, I don't want it to be something as crazy as "You wake up each morning and prepare your feats" a la a caster's spells. I'd also like a time difference between retraining one style vs many styles.

Perhaps something like you can retrain one style with a full day of training.

That way you can always retrain at least your latest tier easily. But if you want to change up things drastically it will take you 2-4 days (depending on how much you want to change, or if you want to change prereq feats that are used in multiple styles)

Is that speeding it up too much? Not enough? I'm not really sure what the sweet spot for this is. In my campaigns we have a tendency of having several weeks of downtime between adventures, which is where I expected this skill to be used most, with perhaps the occasional tailoring of one tree to some specific encounter you are expecting on an adventure you just started, to give you something to do while the casters are doing their scrying and research. If that's not really the norm I definitely see the need to speed up the process, I'm just not sure how much.

Seerow

2010-12-05, 05:50 PM

Update: Went back over some of the focus abilities, and tweaked them. Reworded the focus ability description to make it more clear how it works, and reformatted the focus abilities themselves. Made a few tweaks to the effects, some for clarity, some to boost in power, others to reduce a bit.

Tweaked a couple of stances slightly, considering adding more, as I realized that there's stances for pure defense, and for archery, but nothing really for a melee focused damage dealer. Though the Fighter could dip into initiator stances for that it would probably help to have a couple of his own. Maybe also one or two to support the duelist build.

Did not update learning ease because I'm still not sure what the sweet spot for it would be at.

T.G. Oskar

2010-12-05, 06:19 PM

Really nobody wants to educate me as to what out of combat abilities a Warblade has that makes it so much better than this fighter?

Just for the heck of nitpicking, though the difference between a Warblade and a Fighter out of combat is roughly the same:

First, the Warblade gets more skill points than the Fighter (read: the PHB fighter, not your redux), AND it relies on Intelligence so it gets more than 4 skill points. It also gets Balance, Diplomacy (along with Intimidate), Knowledge (history) and Knowledge (local) in case you need to work with something outside of battle. True, it's not compared to your Fighter, albeit in that case it does get Diplomacy so you can attempt diplomancy with the Warblade; in either case, they still get the same amount of skill points (though the Warblade still has the Int benefits that allow getting slightly more skill points than your Fighter).

Then there's Iron Heart Surge, Iron Heart Endurance and Sudden Leap. Oh, and White Raven Tactics (though I personally debate on the nature of the boost when used on self). Iron Heart Surge allows you to recover from a spell, effect or condition that affects you, but it doesn't specify which kind so you can effectively dispel Antimagic Field's effects on you, or questionably attempt to remove stuff like stunning, paralysis or petrifaction; some claim unconsciousness as well (but again, questionable). Iron Heart Endurance is basically a self-heal tactic that allows you to recover twice your level (doesn't say Initiator Level, but it seems to be your character level) while having less than full normal hit points, and since you can use maneuvers out of combat, it's effective to remove some of your wounds outside of battle (or at least every 5 minutes, or a few rounds with Adaptive Style). Sudden Leap is simple; do a Jump check as a swift action and literally move the distance determined by the check (so if you roll a 20, you can move 20 feet; doesn't say you can stop, but it says you can move), so it's a swift action movement based on your Jump check. WRT works better in battle, but if you have a non-combat encounter with initiative it still works (say, assume you're doing a race or something, and the DM declares you to roll initiative); in that case, Moment of Alacrity works as well. Hunter's Sense allows you to gain the scent ability (good for tracking, though you don't get Survival as a class skill). Hearing the Air grants a +5 bonus on Listen checks and blindsense up to 30 ft. Absolute Steel grants you a +10 ft. enhancement bonus to your speed, which works at any time. Mountain Hammer and the "[Old] Mountain Hammer" line works not only to deal damage to enemies with damage reduction, but also to objects as well (ignores hardness). Order Forged from Chaos grants everyone another move action, but that's harder to work with.

Now, aside from the first paragraph, all of the others are maneuvers (and maneuvers that the Warblade can take without trouble, unlike the PHB fighter or just about any non-adept martial character can. Some are questionable, and some are clever uses of the maneuvers outside of combat (but that are clearly meant to be used for combat). And, of course, the idea is not to mention why having all of those are better than your redux of Fighter. However, it's mostly to answer part of your question: what out-of-combat abilities the Warblade has, regardless of whether they're better or not than the Fighter's ones. At best, they're slightly more diverse (scent, blindsense, various boosts to movement, minor healing) but not necessarily more powerful. That I leave to the consideration of others; do recall, as well, that you can decide to get martial scrolls and magic items with those abilities in case you need to use them but not learn them, albeit the idea is to work without magic items (or that everyone has the same accessibility, hence no one has an advantage over the other). But you can get an idea of where the Warblade stands in comparison to the PHB Fighter (at least one without ACFs, most specifically Dungeon Crasher).

Now, if we're talking about the Swordsage...

Seerow

2010-12-05, 06:56 PM

MrTytronico

2010-12-05, 07:23 PM

Seerow

2010-12-05, 07:28 PM

I like the Idea of a more versatile fighter, perhaps one who pelts enemies with arrows, then squishes enemies with a hammer. It would allow for a solid class to be a great deal more fun to play! (My players avoid fighters because they find it boring)

Well recommend they take a look at this then.

Also, for pelting an enemy with arrows, is this epic enough?

Focus: The Fighter can aim his attacks in an attempt to force his opponent to drop prone. As a standard action, the Fighter can target a single enemy with an attack. The enemy has a choice: to drop prone as a free action and automatically evade the attack, or remain upright and take damage as if the Fighter had landed with a critical hit. Enemies who are already prone cannot be targeted by this ability.

Expend: The Fighter unload a hail of arrows or similar ammunition over an area, forcing all combatants in the area to seek cover or take damage. To use this effect the Fighter takes a full-round action and chooses a cone-shaped area, with a range of his bow's first range increment. Until the Fighter's next turn, all creatures who end their turn in the area and don't have total cover relative to the Fighter take damage as if the Fighter had hit them with half the total number of ranged attacks he can make in a full attack (damage rolled once, on the Fighter's turn). Creatures affected by this ability are entitled to a Reflex save for half damage, DC equal to 10 plus 5 times his total number of attacks.This action uses a number of arrows equal to twice his total number of attacks.

T.G. Oskar

2010-12-05, 11:10 PM

Thanks for the reply T.G. Oskar.

I understand the Warblade has more skillpoints than the PHB fighter and a lot more versatility than it. That was never the question, though it was nice to have all of that elaborated.

Having a reason to stack int is a good reason as to why Warblade has a better skill selection. I can also see the argument for Warblade having a better skill list (though Diplomacy I think is the only major one Warblade has this fighter doesn't). Actually, just noticed I don't have Bluff on this Fighter, I think I need to fix that given Bluff has occasional combat uses.

As to the rest, it was very informative. Like I may have mentioned I'm pretty rusty, for the last few years I've played mostly 4e and SR4, and just within the last few weeks started getting into this again, considering starting up a new campaign, and decided to go hunting for this (like I said, most of it was done before 4e hit, a bit over 3 years ago on the wotc forums). As such there's a lot of things from the current metagame and where it evolved that don't quite make sense to me yet, and other things I've just flat forgot. Don't take me as being defensive when I question things, I'm just trying to see where you all are coming from.

That said, the Fighter does have relatively easy access to most of those same maneuvers. He gets it later than the Warblade for sure, but as long as they are 5th (6th?) level or less, he gets them by level 20. He has the feats he can burn on it if he wants to, and can get them as style feats if he thinks they're situational enough he won't want them all the time. With 4 styles, I don't think it would be unusual to see someone dedicate at least one to utility feats that most people might avoid.

Also, the Combat Focus ability Reflexive Style lets him say "I have that feat" pretty much any time. So even if he didn't want to burn one of his feats to pick up the maneuver, when the situation came up that he needed that extra bit of healing, or that awesome jump check, next time he enters combat focus, he could decide he has that maneuver, and use it, though he can only do that particular trick in combat or some other stressful situation (the requisite to gain combat focus or warrior's focus).

Oh, that's not the game and how it has evolved. IHS and WRT are old tricks, and what else I mentioned was just me skipping over the ToB book for around 15 minutes, getting all the stuff that Warblades can use out of battle. Plus the extra skill points and the extra skills over the PHB Fighter. But the Warblade is definitely combat-geared; the only reason it's not Tier 2 is because it can't pull off stuff like a Sorcerer or psionic character could (basically, have utility spells that can be used and spammed several times per day to do three or four things, so you're looking at casters whom are on their terrain when choosing "Swiss Army"-knife spells), but not Tier 4 because while it can do one thing very well, it can dabble in others (out of combat utility and allowing to choose maneuvers that you wouldn't otherwise choose as a feat, such as Dual Strike or Whirlwind Attack or Spring Attack) with little difficulty.

Also, I've done more reading on the tier system, specifically finding the "Why each class is the tier it is" topic. What I found interesting is out of combat utility wasn't necessarily required, or even commonly mentioned in tier3.

[..]

Given the huge flexibility inherent to this Fighter rework, I can't see it fitting under tier 4 at all. The defining point of tier4 is that it has one area of expertise and everything else it's useless at. Look at this fighter! It can swap from melee to range combat on the drop of a hat and lose nothing, it has a trick for every situation, it can decide "I have that maneuver from the warblade for this encounter". Between the various styles and warrior focus abilities, I find it hard to imagine a Fighter being left out in the cold unable to do anything shy of something that ONLY a full caster can handle. Even then it has its own unique tricks it brings to the table ("Sorry you can't cast through the space I am occupying. So sorry").

Excuses to Jaron, but the Tier system is pretty subjective. It seeks to provide a general guideline of what a class may do with minimal optimization at least (something between out of the box and choosing stuff that makes sense, but not deliberately going for strong tricks). However, there are points where there are discrepancies, such as Rogue being Tier 3 (IIRC) mostly because of Use Magic Device as a class skill. It is true; UMD is a pretty powerful skill because it provides the Rogue with the ability to feign spellcasting ability and to counter its deficiencies, but a Rogue without UMD isn't the specified Tier. However, it has a few things that still salvage it.

One of those discrepancies is that, to reach Tier 3, you must have some sort of "spellcasting" method that, while not true spellcasting, it can do stuff with little effort. It also should be as potent as that of a Bard; if it's as potent as that of a Paladin or Ranger, then it's not worthy of Tier 3. However, it's quite difficult to pin down the actual Tier of a homebrewed class because of how to measure non-existing mechanics. Another big trouble to homebrew is that Warblade is often considered a stealth fix to Fighter because of what brings into the game, something that not even the best of Fighter ACFs (in this case, Dungeon Crasher) can counteract. This means that, whenever you hear the "Fighter" being reworked, usually you tend to compare it to the Warblade, and the result is usually binary: it's not as powerful as the Warblade and its tricks, or it's too similar to the Warblade and hence just an expy that tries to be a Warblade without using maneuvers.

Personally, I'm on the band that Warblade really does outclass the PHB Fighter, though I differ on whether the Swordsage really replaces the Monk (or Ninja) and vehemently oppose that the Crusader is a refluffed, improved Paladin. As for why I haven't made any other comment towards your build; I was about to play with a very, very similar take on your class, except that it had maneuvers and kept the idea of the combat styles (but instead of four variants, it allowed only two variants). Basically, it made for a good warrior class, but the biggest hurdle I could find is that, aside from well-established feat chains, it's really hard to work combat styles. For example: the idea was to make a Dragoon-like character (actual Dragoon, aka light mounted infantry) which used spears and firearmsenchanted crossbows. The idea was that I could shift from using a spear to use a firearm, and the feat and maneuver choices would deal with setting my attack styles while having the regular feat choices determine my defensive styles, not to mention general mounting capabilities (to always fight mounted). It was quite hard to find proper feats (considering most of the small bonuses to feats were eliminated from the game), making it hard to define a combat style and maneuvers to fit that in. Mostly, the thing was that while it was rather easy to deal with the spear style (eventually get into charging maneuvers and tactics), dealing with the enchanted crossbow side was harder when you missed stuff like Point Blank Shot and couldn't get access to Rapid Shot. It was also a rare concept (using Disguise, Bluff and other social skills to act as a spy), but it really pushed the limits of what I could do with the class.

Looking at the Fighter remake, I understand where that idea was taken from, and I find that it may be hard to justify four differing combat styles (it's already difficult to justify two) unless you go for the basics (Power Attack, Mounted Combat, Two-Weapon Fighting, Archery) which may have enough feats to fill the list. I did a good attempt to work with a 5th level character using that derived work, and it would have been an interesting character (the game never progressed, though), but if it's already hard to work on builds using the existing books, it's even harder to work with new tactics that look, act and behave like maneuvers and stances but that definitely aren't. Essentially, I find the Warblade suits the needs of the master of combat, and I find it hard to replace that with another class; by no means take it as a bad thing, it's just that IMO the Warblade was quite well constructed (though, I find it could get something more; the bonus feats aren't the best thing there).

But, if you need some advice, IMO: 2 combat styles, more bonus feats and the ability to shift your combat style feats with some effort is enough to make a very complex and useful Fighter. The rest is mostly finding in what else it may be useful: I'd say adding some of the Marshal stuff to be a minor buffer, notice some of the tricks of good builds to find nice debuffing tactics, and perhaps some sort of counter against magical tactics which is mostly what makes the Fighter suffer. I can't tell how much of this is implemented (cursory look at the class, at most), but in general I find that the closer and the simpler the remake, the better.

But again, that's just me.

The Fighter may not be the best in social situations, but you don't expect him to be. I'm considering maybe having some class features key off Wisdom though, turning that into a secondary or tertiary stat, giving the Fighter better Spot/Listen, Sense Motive, and helping out his Will Save some, making him more useful out of combat, even with a minor niche in a social situation. Do you feel that would help at all, or would doing so end up being a waste of time?

Well, I do expect the Fighter to at least have a nice Intimidate ability and something else to do with Intimidate. I mean, Intimidate is a good way to taunt enemies (thus doing something much better than what the Goad feat does), and serves as Diplomacy in a pinch (not to mention it's bizarre why Paladins don't get intimidate, but that's stuff for another thread). Maybe providing some options for using Int, Wis and Cha alongside Strength, Constitution and Dexterity (but keeping it minor)? Or add physical scores to social situations (adding Strength to Intimidate is a good one, IMO)?

Seerow

2010-12-05, 11:49 PM

Oh, that's not the game and how it has evolved.

Well in terms of things people value is what I was mostly referring to there. The ToB tricks likely are very old, and fall under either things I forgot, or never became aware of. (Realize I was working on this before ToB was even announced, and stopped a while after it was released, at which point I had real life intrude, and by the time things had settled down 4e was out and I was playing that since my group had swapped to it while I was gone. Towards the end we updated stances to be compatible with ToB, but that's about it). Like I said, I'm pretty rusty.

However, there are points where there are discrepancies, such as Rogue being Tier 3 (IIRC) mostly because of Use Magic Device as a class skill

If rogue was tier 3, it has since been downgraded to tier4.

One of those discrepancies is that, to reach Tier 3, you must have some sort of "spellcasting" method that, while not true spellcasting, it can do stuff with little effort. It also should be as potent as that of a Bard; if it's as potent as that of a Paladin or Ranger, then it's not worthy of Tier 3. However, it's quite difficult to pin down the actual Tier of a homebrewed class because of how to measure non-existing mechanics. Another big trouble to homebrew is that Warblade is often considered a stealth fix to Fighter because of what brings into the game, something that not even the best of Fighter ACFs (in this case, Dungeon Crasher) can counteract. This means that, whenever you hear the "Fighter" being reworked, usually you tend to compare it to the Warblade, and the result is usually binary: it's not as powerful as the Warblade and its tricks, or it's too similar to the Warblade and hence just an expy that tries to be a Warblade without using maneuvers.

I get that. I can understand the inclination to ignore Fighter fixes in light of the Warblade, but many people want something different. Particularly something more flexible.

The trick I'm trying to work with is get close enough to the power of spellcasting, without being spellcasting. The warrior focus powers have some really neat effects. While I understand it's no Gate/Planar Binding, they tend to offer a fair bit more utility or bonus damage than Meteor Swarm and other similarly weak high level spells.

I think I need to go dig out my tome of battle to compare some of the effects to maneuvers, but I think they're pretty comparable. By level 20 you can be using 1-2 of these abilities per round (1 round recharge and potential synergy with combat focus) which is pretty awesome. At lower levels they give the Fighter short bursts of awesome once or twice an encounter, and at mid levels they become a hard decision, where you're no longer losing the focus for a very long time, but your focus is giving you 2-4 benefits which are all very nice to have, it's a hard thing to give up, but for many of the abilities it can be worth it.

It's interesting to read your anecdote regarding trying a fighter with styles though. One thing that stuck out at me was this though:

It was quite hard to find proper feats (considering most of the small bonuses to feats were eliminated from the game), making it hard to define a combat style and maneuvers to fit that in.

By this did you mean that a lot of the small bonus feats were removed from your game? If so I can understand why you'd have trouble filling up your feat tree given so many extra feats. On the other hand though, I could easily see a fighter spending enough feats for all 4 combat styles...

However the big question is how many different combinations of feats could you get that are still considered optimal? If every fighter is using the same style setup because they can get literally everything they want, I can see your point.

I think I'll need to make a few sample characters to see if that's the case though.

I'd say adding some of the Marshal stuff to be a minor buffer, notice some of the tricks of good builds to find nice debuffing tactics, and perhaps some sort of counter against magical tactics which is mostly what makes the Fighter suffer. I can't tell how much of this is implemented (cursory look at the class, at most), but in general I find that the closer and the simpler the remake, the better.

Well the goal is to make him a jack of all trades. The sheer number of feats assures that, but he also has a fair bit of leeway with stances to get stances for various uses. Sure he could get all 4 of the melee oriented stances, but why not trade out one of those lower level melee stances for a mid level Archery stance? You lose little and gain a lot! Combat Focus abilities on the other hand are where I expect a little specialization to come into play. There's options there for the generalist (Weapon and Armor mastery are both awesome for anyone who will be switching weapons regularly, for example), but there's also options there that are highly specialized, and in general a bit more powerful as a result.

There are several powers he can choose which are pretty heavily anti-caster (see: Dance of the Weave for example, though that's a high level one) as you suggest, and several that are group support, but mostly in the area of defending the group. I don't really think buffing the group with + to hit or extra attacks or whatever is the warrior's niche. That's what you want a Paladin or a Bard for.

Well, I do expect the Fighter to at least have a nice Intimidate ability and something else to do with Intimidate. I mean, Intimidate is a good way to taunt enemies (thus doing something much better than what the Goad feat does), and serves as Diplomacy in a pinch (not to mention it's bizarre why Paladins don't get intimidate, but that's stuff for another thread). Maybe providing some options for using Int, Wis and Cha alongside Strength, Constitution and Dexterity (but keeping it minor)? Or add physical scores to social situations (adding Strength to Intimidate is a good one, IMO)?

So bonuses to skills based on physical attributes rather than encouraging use of other attributes? I suppose that is a fair bit cleaner, but outside of say Strength to Intimidate, it doesn't make much sense.

A tanking warrior already has a good reason to want a high intimidate with "True Threat"

Also, with the current setup of Warrior Focus, the primary place to give new class optional class features is going to be in the form of things that are usable only in combat, which is why I was leaning towards encouraging stats/skills in combat, so that out of combat they are more effective.

As an aside, bringing this back really highlights one thing to me: How useful keeping a running record of development changes and the discussion that led to it is. Just reading the first 5-6 pages of the old thread this was in brought back a lot of memories of why things developed the way they did, in a way I wouldn't have gotten just going back and looking at the class again. I really wish the web archive I found this on had kept the whole topic instead of just the first few pages then the last page. Oh well, at least now I know on any future project of my own to keep my own records of such things.

Seerow

2010-12-06, 12:01 AM

Current ideas on what needs to be updated:
-Find an appropriate timeframe for learning ease. Possibility: Have time scale with Fighter level. Say something like 20 hours per feat, divided by Fighter level, round up to the nearest hour. (So a level 3 fighter still takes about 2 days to retrain his feats, a high level fighter can retrain them all in about the same time)

-More combat focus ability options. Current thought: More focus on standard action expend abilities. Things like a guaranteed crit or precision damage. There's already a lot in terms of swift/immediate action abilities, and several full attack options.

-Consider: Extending duration of some of the expend powers. Giving up combat focus for a 1 turn bonus to grapple is going to result in being awesome one turn then being eaten alive the next.

-Figure out what a fighter's out of combat niche is, find some way to support it. We know he won't be the face, or the party's trap monkey, but some bonus to skills like Ride, Swim, Climb, and Intimidate couldn't hurt.

-More stance options. Need at least one more for each level of stance, to give 3 options at each stance level. Consider damage oriented stances, probably at least one with a precision damage bonus to support light fighters, and some support for dual weapons and power attackers as well.

-Consider: Some way to synergize ranged attacks and melee attacks for the Fighter. The Fighter really can't afford high dex if he's going the high armor route, which severely limits him in his ranged options. A primary range fighter can go the light weapon/twf/light armor route, a primary melee fighter should have a viable ranged option. Considering: Strength to attack rolls for thrown weapons, or encouraging wisdom as a secondary stat to make zen archery worth picking up.

To do: Make a few sample characters, see if it's possible to use all 4 combat styles in different ways.

nonsi

2010-12-06, 07:04 AM

It's more capable than the core Fighter, I'll give you that, but...

Still too fragile. It needs higher resiliency.
A true warrior should be the toughest cookie in the ballpark to crack.
For starters, having to always wait 4 rounds till 10th level (and 3 till 15th) before regaining Warrior's Focus leaves it open for too long (OTOH, if you use decreasing dice, then there's a random factor that would still make one think real hard before expending, but when the time's right, there's still a chance of not paying to high an 'exposure time').
Beyond that, it needs the ability thwart off many temporary conditions others can dodge or ignore altogether to be able to remain a part of the action more often than not.

Still nowhere near enough the battlefield control fit for the icon of martial prowess.
It needs to be a lot more mobile.

Too convoluted and cumbersome to build and to maintain in-game (requires too much bookkeeping IMO).

I couldn't figure out how stances selection go according the levels.

There are other issues, but not as significant as the above.

Consider using multiple columns for different categories of features. This way you can put more features in without making the table unreadable.

Seerow

2010-12-06, 11:26 AM

Still too fragile. It needs higher resiliency.
A true warrior should be the toughest cookie in the ballpark to crack.

Really? Between the ridiculous number of feats which can be spent on improving resilience, and several of the warrior focus abilities being usable for defense, I'm not sure where this comes from.

The main weakness left at this point is the weak Will save. Way back in the original, it had Will and Reflex upgraded to a medium save progression, but in the end that was deemed over the top due to the other options the Fighter had available.

Like I'm curious what you would consider difficult to crack? If you have any suggestions, I would be happy to consider implementing them as focus abilities, or feats.

Remember though, the core chasis of the fighter itself is meant to be pure flexibility.

For starters, having to always wait 4 rounds till 10th level (and 3 till 15th) before regaining Warrior's Focus leaves it open for too long (OTOH, if you use decreasing dice, then there's a random factor that would still make one think real hard before expending, but when the time's right, there's still a chance of not paying to high an 'exposure time').

I'm not a fan of having randomness introduced into a resource system (and that is effectively what the Focus is). That said, if the length is your problem I would recommend checking the Dual Focus line of feats included in the OP. It mitigates that cost a fair bit.

Beyond that, it needs the ability thwart off many temporary conditions others can dodge or ignore altogether to be able to remain a part of the action more often than not.

Sounds again like something that could be made into a Warrior's Focus ability. Maintain focus for +x to saves, expend it to shrug off one effect that a save could end, or something like that.

Still nowhere near enough the battlefield control fit for the icon of martial prowess.
It needs to be a lot more mobile.

Did you even read the stances or warrior focus powers? Curious here. Being able to block line of effect within reach is a huge amount of control. And there's several powers that allow a lot of bonus to the normal control methods (tripping, grappling etc) that simply aren't viable by later levels. True Threat is a great debuffing ability that can also act as a taunt, and Foil is any caster's worst nightmare. Charging Assault and Active assault are both a lot of added mobility.

Too convoluted and cumbersome to build and to maintain in-game (requires too much bookkeeping IMO).

It's easier to use in game than a Wizard, or even than a Tome of Battle character.

The biggest thing would be keeping an index card for each of your styles, to more easily keep track of what you have access to at the time, and a quick rundown of how your stats change when you swap.

I couldn't figure out how stances selection go according the levels.

I was actually surprised nobody had trouble figuring this out earlier, it's one of the more confusing things to figure out at first.

Think of it this way, by 10th level, you have 4 separate feat trees you can swap between quickly, with 6 feats in each. Of these 6 feats, 2 must be shared among all trees (the two gained at level 1 and 2), 3 must be the same in two trees, and each tree has one unique feat. As you progress past 10, each tree gains one more unique feat.

For a quick non-optimized core only example:

1) Dodge
2) Mobility
4) Power Attack
6) Weapon Focus (Longsword)
8) Weapon Specialization (Longsword)
10) Spring Attack

1) Dodge
2) Mobility
4) Power Attack
6) Weapon Focus (Longsword)
8) Weapon Specialization (Longsword)
10) Combat Expertise

1) Dodge
2) Mobility
4) Point Blank Shot
6) Rapid Shot
8) Manyshot
10) Shot on the Run

1) Dodge
2) Mobility
4) Point Blank Shot
6) Rapid Shot
8) Manyshot
10) Mounted Archery

Like I said it's core only and really unoptimized, but it should give you an idea of how it's intended to flow. If it looks like some really important feats come too late, remember that the Fighter can retrain them given some time to himself, so at a lower level he would have already had the most important, and at a higher when the styles branch off, he retrains the more specialized feats into a specific style. After all there's no sense of having power attack in your archery tree.

MrTytronico

2010-12-06, 01:45 PM

The only thing I am worried about with this build is ending up with fighters that know how to stack feats. You get the wrong, or right, feat chains lined up and its game over.

Seerow

2010-12-06, 02:31 PM

The only thing I am worried about with this build is ending up with fighters that know how to stack feats. You get the wrong, or right, feat chains lined up and its game over.

In what way? The fighter never has more feats at one time than he currently can, so the power gain is essentially nul, it just allows more flexibility.

I can see where someone who picks poor feats could end up weaker, but that's always going to be the case.

edit: On an unrelated note:

-I remembered why I never ported over the Weapon Adaptability from Warblade. I initially had an intent to rewrite several feats, including the weapon focus chain, which would have made them not specific to a weapon, and instead a few weapon specific feats like the quarterstaff one listed that give a neat bonus to a specific weapon. I wound up abandoning that.

-I'm considering a stance that allows any weapon specific feats you have to apply to any weapon you pick up. Given the opportunity cost compared to the other stances, it wouldn't be too strong, but it would still be valuable for a generalist fighter. like the kind that has quick draw and is swapping between his sword and board for defense, over to a spiked chain for lockdown, then to a greatsword or lance or whatever for a huge charge damage.

-Also considering a stance that lets you throw melee weapons with a range increment 10, using strength mod to hit, and dealing damage as a normal melee hit (including allowing power attack on the hit). Does this seem worth it? Are there feats already that could do that that I'm forgetting? I know there's something like this in 4e, but not sure about 3.5.

-I was thinking about the skill problem, and think I may have a tenative solution: Learning Ease. Have its stat bonus also apply to skill checks. That way the Fighter chooses one stat he gets +10 to for skill checks, and one stat he gets +5 to for skill checks, by level 20. Essentially +5 to skills that use one stat, and +2-3 for skills keying off a different stat. Then you have to decide, do you need that bonus more for getting into high stat prereq feats, or do you need it more for skill checks? Possibly also a feat that cannot be taken as a fighter bonus feat, but requires Fighter level 10, that lets you apply learning ease to additional stats.

Ziegander

2010-12-06, 03:26 PM

Seerow

2010-12-06, 03:34 PM

Isn't there a Power Throw or Brutal Throw feat in Complete Adventurer that allows Strength mod to hit with thrown weapons? And there's something else (or maybe the same feat) that allows Power Attack with thrown weapons.

Yep, found the Brutal Throw that lets you use thrown weapons with strength, and Power Throw is basically thrown weapon power attack. It however doesn't let you throw weapons that normally can't be thrown... but there is the Thrown Weapon property, which is a +1 weapon enhancement. I can add that onto the Master of Arms list, and it fits perfectly. If a Fighter doesn't want to pick that up, or expend focus to get the thrown property, they can get their weapon enchanted with it by default.

Ziegander

2010-12-06, 03:35 PM

Ah, well, in that case there's also Throw Anything in... Complete Warrior.

Seerow

2010-12-06, 03:38 PM

Ah, well, in that case there's also Throw Anything in... Complete Warrior.

Sounds good. No need to put in a stance to replicate what can already be done, and seems like a good investment for one of the styles for the Fighter.

I also updated the Master of Arms possible enchantments list to include Throwing.

nonsi

2010-12-07, 03:42 AM

Really? Between the ridiculous number of feats which can be spent on improving resilience, and several of the warrior focus abilities being usable for defense, I'm not sure where this comes from.

As much as choices are an advantage, they're also the problem.
Make the wrong combinations and you're brittle as clay.
Furthermore, ridiculous number is exactly that. Given there's so little you could practically exploit out of the lot, feats are never a real argument for offsetting a class's shortcomings.

Like I'm curious what you would consider difficult to crack?

In a moment.

If you have any suggestions, I would be happy to consider implementing them as focus abilities, or feats.

I have some, but the way your Fighter is laid out at current, they'd be very difficult to implement.

Remember though, the core chasis of the fighter itself is meant to be pure flexibility.

Given the poor implementation, I'm not sure how much thought was dedicated for this class by the designers and I attribute no value to their intent.

Sounds again like something that could be made into a Warrior's Focus ability. Maintain focus for +x to saves, expend it to shrug off one effect that a save could end, or something like that.

Exactly, but this one has to be hardwired, not an option.

Perhaps something like you can retrain one style with a full day of training.
That way you can always retrain at least your latest tier easily. But if you want to change up things drastically it will take you 2-4 days (depending on how much you want to change, or if you want to change prereq feats that are used in multiple styles)

Why retrain at all on a daily basis ?
Why not just have more immediately and later on have the ability of using certain feats even untrained (provided you have all the prereqs) at the higher levels ?

Did you even read the stances or warrior focus powers? Curious here. Being able to block line of effect within reach is a huge amount of control. And there's several powers that allow a lot of bonus to the normal control methods (tripping, grappling etc) that simply aren't viable by later levels. True Threat is a great debuffing ability that can also act as a taunt, and Foil is any caster's worst nightmare. Charging Assault and Active assault are both a lot of added mobility.

Again - make the wrong build choices and you're basically screwed.

The biggest thing would be keeping an index card for each of your styles, to more easily keep track of what you have access to at the time, and a quick rundown of how your stats change when you swap.

One thing I don't get. If you know them all, why don't you have access to all of them at once ?
Another issue I have with the styles is that they don't make sense.
I'll explain: take your example of style #1. If I got to level 12 and then took Combat Expertise, what did I learn that I didn't already know by 10th level (given style #2)?

And if UMD is enough to make a rogue into t3, it's not like this Fighter has to use any of his normal leveling feats on combat related stuff, he could easily afford to burn a feat for Skill Training (UMD). (Not that that is a particularly strong selling point, but the option is there if UMD is just that strong

Offtopic, this is one of the main reasons UMD doesn't exist In my house rules (but that's just a side note).

I understand the Warblade has more skillpoints than the PHB fighter and a lot more versatility than it. That was never the question, though it was nice to have all of that elaborated.

All the Warblade's interesting built-in features are keyed for high-Int, making it automatically packed with skill points.

Back to "In a moment".

As far as my experience goes, BK's Warlord (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=2394) is a great place to start from. It offers half decent customizability without compromising its solid infrastructure (being viable out of the box). It's quite effective mechanically, but I had a few issues with it (bonus-feats layout too constrictive, the controversial 'Shellshock', inexhaustible death effects and still not enough customizability or durability for my personal preference).
Therefore, I used BK's Warlord as a baseline for the creation of what I envision to be a worthy template for creating a warrior that is extremely flexible in build and in game and could stand as equal contributor in a group (out of the box) (http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-legacy-house-rules/270794-my-3-5-house-rules-codex-now-fully-reorganized.html) (it's in entry #6, if you're interested).

At a glance, my Warrior seems bursting with features all over the board, but I believe you'd agree that on one hand it can never make tier 2 and otoh never drops to tier 4 (and it doesn't have features that defy common sense, such as Weapon Aptitude or prepared maneuvers).
Now, given tier 3 is considered (rightfully so) to be the sweet spot, this is exactly where I was aiming for.
And let's not forget that warriors are meant as the 1st and primary line of defense (the kind that one has to bypass (rather than demolish) to get to the squishies), and unless you want to role an expendable meatshield, the sucker that drops just to keep the casters functional one extra moment, you really need to be able to have a decent chance of stomaching punishments that would take anyone else out of the equation.

Roderick_BR

2010-12-07, 09:27 AM

Lemme get a quick review:
More skills points and class skills are always good. I always thought that non-casters always should have a good ammount of skills.
Focus: Reminds me of the Combat Focus feat of PHB2, plus some ACFs I saw around. Good to have it as a class ability.
Combat Styles: I think I remember seeing something like that around some years ago. It's an interesting take to the "I can learn 10 different things in one single class level" that casters can do, and the fighter not. I considered using it for my fighters in my games. This version looks simple and good enough.

All in all, good fun for fighters.
And yes, warblades still win out ahead because they have a list of abilities that can be changed around, and access to abilities that fighters usually don't, as it was mentioned.

Seerow

2010-12-07, 11:54 AM

As much as choices are an advantage, they're also the problem.
Make the wrong combinations and you're brittle as clay.

And some people don't want to be tough as nails. This fighter can also support being the archer, or the lightly armored duelist/two weapon fighter. Neither of those scream "I'm an unkillable machine". Even so, they can pick up stuff to make them a little tougher than the norm if they want, but a Fighter fillinig either of those roles is still going to be stronger than say a swashbuckler, or a rogue, even without focusing on defense.

Furthermore, ridiculous number is exactly that. Given there's so little you could practically exploit out of the lot, feats are never a real argument for offsetting a class's shortcomings.

Which is why the Fighter got class features in addition to the styles. It was understood that feats alone wouldn't offset the power balance. That said, feats are still strong, and having a wide variety of them means that feats that would normally be considered weak and not worth taken are suddenly available to you, because you have a few to spare that you could blow on it.

Given the poor implementation, I'm not sure how much thought was dedicated for this class by the designers and I attribute no value to their intent.

So now we're on to hurling out insults. And even so you still haven't given explanation as to how the class is designed poorly except "choice = bad!"

If choice were a bad thing, full casters wouldn't be considered nearly as powerful as they are. Every caster is all about choice, and making the best use out of the resources they have.

Exactly, but this one has to be hardwired, not an option.

Why does it have to be hardwired? You already have hard wired the ability to add half your fighter level to a save in a pinch. Not every Fighter needs to be an unstoppable juggernaut.

Why retrain at all on a daily basis ?

You're not expected to. But should some situation come up and you find out that X obscure feat will be very useful against the BBEG, you could retrain to it much easier than anyone else. Or if you find your current feat build isn't working for you, you can retrain to get something that does work better.

Why not just have more immediately and later on have the ability of using certain feats even untrained (provided you have all the prereqs) at the higher levels ?

Please check out the warrior's focus power reflexive style.

If you want me to say "The warrior has access to every feat in the game ever simultaneously" you're out of your mind.

Again - make the wrong build choices and you're basically screwed.

If you go dipping into bad PrCs, you're screwed. If you learn/prepare the wrong spells you're screwed. If you are any class but the fighter and pick the wrong feats, you're screwed.

Why is this different?

Also, what set of warrior's focus abilities are you looking at that screw you so badly? Please, take this warrior, pick some theme you want to follow, and pick out focus abilities, stances, and feats, fitting to that style. Show me how you could mess it up within reason (ie not doing stupid **** like taking unarmed mastery while working on an archery build and the like)

One thing I don't get. If you know them all, why don't you have access to all of them at once ?

Another issue I have with the styles is that they don't make sense.
I'll explain: take your example of style #1. If I got to level 12 and then took Combat Expertise, what did I learn that I didn't already know by 10th level (given style #2)?

Think of the style like a stance. You have learned to use this particular set of feats as a package deal. But changing your stance slightly, your combat style is suddenly completely different. Think of a martial arts master switching from Kung Fu to Judo or something like that, while he can mix and match moves, several of them will require a specific stance, and the best master is switching between these stances freely to use what he wants when he wants. Someone less skilled takes a little time to adjust between two completely different styles of fighting.

And if at level 12, you decided you wanted expertise in your first style, you're still getting another feat in your other 3. If you want to take the same exact feats in all your styles, you could, but why would you? That's like a Sorcerer spending all of his spells known on the same 9 spells. He can do it, but there is no reason to do so, and every reason not to.

Back to "In a moment".

As far as my experience goes, BK's Warlord (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=2394) is a great place to start from. It offers half decent customizability without compromising its solid infrastructure (being viable out of the box). It's quite effective mechanically, but I had a few issues with it (bonus-feats layout too constrictive, the controversial 'Shellshock', inexhaustible death effects and still not enough customizability or durability for my personal preference).
Therefore, I used BK's Warlord as a baseline for the creation of what I envision to be a worthy template for creating a warrior that is extremely flexible in build and in game and could stand as equal contributor in a group (out of the box) (http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-legacy-house-rules/270794-my-3-5-house-rules-codex-now-fully-reorganized.html) (it's in entry #6, if you're interested).

The first post you linked isn't working, seems brilliantgameologists is down at the moment, second link it seems like what you're referencing is in the download, because there is nothing on the first full page of the topic even referring to what you're talking about.

Focus: Reminds me of the Combat Focus feat of PHB2, plus some ACFs I saw around. Good to have it as a class ability.

Yeah, it is based off the PHB2 combat focus. There's also a feat chain included in the OP to give them synergy. Particularly useful for anyone who thinks the focus regenerates too slowly.

Combat Styles: I think I remember seeing something like that around some years ago. It's an interesting take to the "I can learn 10 different things in one single class level" that casters can do, and the fighter not. I considered using it for my fighters in my games. This version looks simple and good enough.

Yeah the combat styles were the core of the fix initially propsed on the D&D forums about 4 years ago. Gradually we accepted feats alone weren't a good enough fix, so went about expanding it.

And yes, warblades still win out ahead because they have a list of abilities that can be changed around, and access to abilities that fighters usually don't, as it was mentioned.

I'd honestly like to see a Fighter and a Warblade played side by side. While Warblades have a list of abilities, the Fighter's focus abilities are all relatively unique, and things the warblade can't get. The expend effect tends to be on par with the power of a maneuver, and at high levels the Fighter can be expending his focus nearly twice a round if he went with the combat focus synergy feats. On top of that the Fighter is likely to win out in any combat situation that isn't straight up melee combat. He can easily have a full style dedicated to ranged combat, or mounted combat.

And of course, he can choose to have some lower level maneuvers as well, and even one floating one from reflexive style. He won't ever touch the top tier of maneuvers, so the warblade will still shine with those, but on the other hand, the Fighter has a lot going for him that the warblade can't replicate either.

nonsi

2010-12-08, 10:09 AM

And some people don't want to be tough as nails.

You don't start tough as nails, but someone that does all he does through his hands & feet (the hard mundane way) should, with time and experience, become hardier than other would be without unnatural aids. 6th level is where you're no longer a mortal to be found on this world, so it's a good place to start. Beyond 10th level, you're already at least as powerful as any mythic hero ever was, so yes – you should be able to chew broken glass just for the heck of it.

This fighter can also support being the archer, or the lightly armored duelist/two weapon fighter. Neither of those scream "I'm an unkillable machine". Even so, they can pick up stuff to make them a little tougher than the norm if they want, but a Fighter fillinig either of those roles is still going to be stronger than say a swashbuckler, or a rogue, even without focusing on defense.

I believe you're talking about the ability to withstand and deliver regular punishment, while I talk about the ability of having the chance to shake off certain conditions.

That said, feats are still strong, and having a wide variety of them means that feats that would normally be considered weak and not worth taken are suddenly available to you, because you have a few to spare that you could blow on it.

Which is a nice to have, but not much more.

So now we're on to hurling out insults. And even so you still haven't given explanation as to how the class is designed poorly except "choice = bad!"

1. Poor implementation is a fact, not an insult.
2. When designing a homebrew class, one molds it to his/her vision. I see no reason to constrain myself to the purpose others attributed to the core Fighter (which neither you nor I can be sure of).

If choice were a bad thing, full casters wouldn't be considered nearly as powerful as they are. Every caster is all about choice, and making the best use out of the resources they have.

Not the same issue at all.
Having spell X in his spellbooks doesn't prevent a wizard from having spell Y as well.
Even spont. casters have a much wider selections of much more powerful effects and specialized combos from here to kingdom come to abuse the action economy.

Why does it have to be hardwired? You already have hard wired the ability to add half your fighter level to a save in a pinch. Not every Fighter needs to be an unstoppable juggernaut.

Because you don't have barriers & immunities on your side like just about everyone else (and let's skip putting the official Swashbuckler or Samurai into this discussion – they're even worse than the Fighter and should actually be no more than variants rather than separate classes).

You're not expected to. But should some situation come up and you find out that X obscure feat will be very useful against the BBEG, you could retrain to it much easier than anyone else.

Usually, when you encounter a BBEG, you don't get a head start and you're either prepared or dead (otherwise Mr. BBEG turns out to be not much more than – – EG).

Or if you find your current feat build isn't working for you, you can retrain to get something that does work better.

Everyone can retrain a-la PHB-II. The differnce is not all that significant for half experienced players given you can never make a total override within a reasonable time or at all (depending on the DM).

Please check out the warrior's focus power reflexive style.

This one's somewhat similar to what I had in mind, but in my fix it's hardwired.

If you want me to say "The warrior has access to every feat in the game ever simultaneously"...

Not even remotely.

If you go dipping into bad PrCs, you're screwed. If you learn/prepare the wrong spells you're screwed. If you are any class but the fighter and pick the wrong feats, you're screwed.

True, but believe you can tell the difference between inner features and class-combos (when designing a class, you have no control over what a player will combine it with).

Also, what set of warrior's focus abilities are you looking at that screw you so badly?

It's not a specific ability.
(within reason)
Go all offensive (damage freaks) and you're too fragile. Go all defensive (survival freaks) and you lose out on your effectiveness. Anything in between requires a lot of maneuvering.

Think of a martial arts master switching from Kung Fu to Judo or something like that, while he can mix and match moves, several of them will require a specific stance

Martial-arts is a kind of hobby for me. I know a bit Jiujitsu, a bitKarate, A bit Ninjitsu.
Whan the time comes to defend myself, I'm gonn'a use everything in my arsenal – no hold bars. I don't depend on a specific posture to exercise different strategies.
And if someone less skilled takes a little time to adjust between two completely different styles of fighting, then stances should be everyone's territory, not fighters' in particular (or at all, being (supposedly) the top dogs of combat).

And if at level 12, you decided you wanted expertise in your first style, you're still getting another feat in your other 3.

Even if it works decently on paper, in term of game practicality it will bring a lot of arguments to the gaming table ("I use X"… "you can't use it now because ___"… "yes I can, I switched on ___"… "but you later switched to ___"… "no, I said I changed my mind"…"I don't care, you said you're doin' it so you did it"… etc etc etc).
Trust me. I've been down the road of similar mechanics. It ain't worth the headache.

The first post you linked isn't working, seems brilliantgameologists is down at the moment

I know. It was when I posted. Guess it will be available in a few days.

second link it seems like what you're referencing is in the download

Correct.
Check it out. Even if you don't use it as is, I'm sure you'll get some ideas out of it.

gkathellar

2010-12-08, 11:00 AM

Martial arts jabber follows.

Martial-arts is a kind of hobby for me. I know a bit Jiujitsu, a bitKarate, A bit Ninjitsu.
Whan the time comes to defend myself, I'm gonn'a use everything in my arsenal – no hold bars. I don't depend on a specific posture to exercise different strategies.
And if someone less skilled takes a little time to adjust between two completely different styles of fighting, then stances should be everyone's territory, not fighters' in particular (or at all, being (supposedly) the top dogs of combat).

Right, but if we're bringing the realism of martial arts into this, you have to keep in mind that all of the styles you mentioned have similar principles and origins (Japanese martial arts that evolved from hard-style Chinese ones). It's easy to use them together because they're compatible - in the terms of this class, they might effectively be one style.

But you can't switch easily from say, kickboxing to capoeira, because all of the moves are executed through different foot movements, postures and placement of the weight. It takes a moment or two to switch from one set of techniques to the other because the principles are entirely at odds.

And that's even truer of weapon styles - from experience I can say that dao technique can be executed (awkwardly) with a katana, but switching back and forth between Chinese fencing skills and kenjutsu would be a good way to get stabbed while you were busy redistributing your weight and changing your grip. Or try to imagine switching from Florentine swordsmanship to Eskrima - there are a lot of similarities between the two, but their strategies and attitudes toward dealing with a sword fight are different enough that you need a second to sit back and rethink your approach.

With regards to this class, any of these combinations could be two different styles, or the A and B sides to a particular style. And again, it makes sense that switching styles seamlessly and easily is the province of a real master, something you learn to do quickly over time. Switching between two styles with different strategic bases or principles requires you to refocus and change your approach.

Seerow

2010-12-08, 01:15 PM

You don't start tough as nails, but someone that does all he does through his hands & feet (the hard mundane way) should, with time and experience, become hardier than other would be without unnatural aids. 6th level is where you're no longer a mortal to be found on this world, so it's a good place to start. Beyond 10th level, you're already at least as powerful as any mythic hero ever was, so yes – you should be able to chew broken glass just for the heck of it.

Honestly that is in large part attributed to hit points. Broken glass might do something like 1d3 damage. ie it can seriously injur or hurt a commoner, but ANY high level character can chew on/swallow it at whim with relatively little trouble.

I believe you're talking about the ability to withstand and deliver regular punishment, while I talk about the ability of having the chance to shake off certain conditions.

I can understand that, and looking at the list of focus abilities, most of them seem to be more along the lines of increased control, with the Armor Masteries being the primary defensive effects (though those are somewhat potent giving pretty good passive durability, and flexibility in armor effects), there isn't much there for just negating a status effect. (Though I believe the maneuver that allows you to negate one effect on you is below 5th level, and thus available to the Fighter, I need to check that)

But like I said, an ability that lets you expend your focus to end any negative status effects currently on you, while giving you a passive deathward or mindblank or something certainly isn't out of the question, as long as it came in at an appropriate level.

1. Poor implementation is a fact, not an insult.
2. When designing a homebrew class, one molds it to his/her vision. I see no reason to constrain myself to the purpose others attributed to the core Fighter (which neither you nor I can be sure of).

This would be true if I were designing a Fighter just for myself, in which case I might want to make it more heavily focused on tanking/control. But the Fighter isn't just that to most people. Since the beginning its halmark has been the flexibility to be anything you want it to be. There is nothing wrong with a redesign of the class taking that into account.

Not the same issue at all.
Having spell X in his spellbooks doesn't prevent a wizard from having spell Y as well.
Even spont. casters have a much wider selections of much more powerful effects and specialized combos from here to kingdom come to abuse the action economy.

But the point is they can make poor decisions, and ruin it. The Sorcerer could have learned nothing but blasty spells. The Wizard could prepare a set of spells not applicable to the current days adventuring. My point is that choice in of itself is not a bad thing. The ability to screw yourself by making a bad choice is not bad.

Because you don't have barriers & immunities on your side like just about everyone else (and let's skip putting the official Swashbuckler or Samurai into this discussion – they're even worse than the Fighter and should actually be no more than variants rather than separate classes).

Not -everyone- has immunity to everything. Yes, most casters have these things. That's a large part of what makes them so strong. Most noncasters don't, or those that do have immunity to meaningless things like disease, and rely on enchantments/items for things like mind blank and immunity to death effects.

That said, I am still open to making it a combat focus ability as mentioned above. Or possibly even a stance.

Usually, when you encounter a BBEG, you don't get a head start and you're either prepared or dead (otherwise Mr. BBEG turns out to be not much more than – – EG).

If you encounter him at random sure. If you happen to be planning an invasion into his home base, not so much. During that planning phase when Mr Wizard is doing his scrying and researching new spells? You can be tailoring your style to the coming encounter.

Everyone can retrain a-la PHB-II. The differnce is not all that significant for half experienced players given you can never make a total override within a reasonable time or at all (depending on the DM).

iirc PHB2 lets you retrain one feat when you gain a level, similar to what was eventually implemented in D&D4e. Being able to retrain any time is in fact a decent class feature, given that by RAW most people can't make those kinds of changes on a whim.

True, but believe you can tell the difference between inner features and class-combos (when designing a class, you have no control over what a player will combine it with).

Isn't the reason most people prefer 3e over 4e that 3e has a lot more flexibility? I really don't understand what your problem is with players having a choice with regards to their class features, allowing them to customize the character to what they want.

Yes, players can make poor decisions. I don't see how building a Fighter unless they go out of their way to gimp themselves, they're going to end up useless, which seems to be your worry.

It's not a specific ability.
(within reason)
Go all offensive (damage freaks) and you're too fragile. Go all defensive (survival freaks) and you lose out on your effectiveness. Anything in between requires a lot of maneuvering.

Go all offensive on damage abilities, and you've still got a d10 hp and high fort to fall back on. You're still far more durable than most classes out there. Go all defensive, and chances are you picked up a lot of control along the way, so your overall damage doesn't matter much.

And the in between doesn't require 'a lot of maneuvering'. Again, that's the beauty of the design, it's made as a primary generalist.

Martial-arts is a kind of hobby for me. I know a bit Jiujitsu, a bitKarate, A bit Ninjitsu.
Whan the time comes to defend myself, I'm gonn'a use everything in my arsenal – no hold bars. I don't depend on a specific posture to exercise different strategies.
And if someone less skilled takes a little time to adjust between two completely different styles of fighting, then stances should be everyone's territory, not fighters' in particular (or at all, being (supposedly) the top dogs of combat).

gkethellar already made this argument better than I could. My initial example was probably a bad one. To expand on what he said, think of say a Ranger with his 7 feats all spent on Archery. He's pretty good as an Archer, but he's going to suck in melee. When he tries to go into melee, he's still trying to act like an Archer, because that's what he's used to, and this hurts him. The Fighter might have a similar style to the Ranger when attacking with his bow, but when it comes to melee, he'll change his stance dramatically to reflect his new style. Or if he decides to put his bastard sword or whatever in one hand and pull out a shield, he'll again switch his stance, not stay in that same agressive stance he was using for full out attacking. That is what the styles are representing. A fast switch between two completely different styles of combat. At low levels the styles are less pronounced and a bit slower to switch between, but at high levels it's a striking difference as the warrior goes from full defensive to a full offense in the blink of an eye, catching the enemy off guard.

Even if it works decently on paper, in term of game practicality it will bring a lot of arguments to the gaming table ("I use X"… "you can't use it now because ___"… "yes I can, I switched on ___"… "but you later switched to ___"… "no, I said I changed my mind"…"I don't care, you said you're doin' it so you did it"… etc etc etc).
Trust me. I've been down the road of similar mechanics. It ain't worth the headache.

That same argument can be applied to anything. "You can't use that spell, you didn't prepare it" "Yes I did, I changed it this morning!" "It's not on the spell list you gave to me" "But I told you I changed it" "But you already used the other spell you had listed for that slot!" "No I didn't, I told you I changed my mind!"

Seerow

2010-12-08, 01:17 PM

Also, I'm not registering an account on another forum just to download some file to read your fix. I'm anti-downloading things on principle anyway, needing to register for it means unless you actually post it somewhere I'm not likely to ever see it.

Ziegander

2010-12-08, 02:54 PM

The "BK's Warlord" he's talking about is a class I made years ago, on the Wizard's forums under the nom de plume bkdubs123. It's somewhat similar to this class actually, but it gets fewer feats and more significant class features. Instead of switching between stances to access its feats it sought to separate the feats into four tiers of power with Epic feats being sprinkled into tier 3, and highly prevalent in tier 4.

Nonsi is of the opinion that choice = bad, so you're not going to convince him there. He also is of the opinion that his Warrior is the best Fighter fix of all time and seems always to link to it in every Fighter fix thread he sees. But anyway, since he thinks that choice is bad he's telling you that your class needs better class features.

I'm not as adamant about it anymore, but I do somewhat agree with him. The thing is, you're exactly right, this Fighter you've designed gets SO many feats that even without class features making sure it operates at baseline productivity it's going to have bases covered well enough just between it's huge number of feats. I used to be VERY obsessed with making sure that anytime I made a class with a large degree of choice I also gave it class features that would manage holes in its offense and defense at least to a modest level.

I remember this class way back in the day. One problem I have with it is that there really aren't enough GOOD feats to make this design worthwhile. If feats were better, or if there were legitimate Fighter only feats, a design like this could rock. But since the majority of feats are things like +1 and +2 bonuses rather than new combat options, utility, or defenses once you've mined through all 30 of your 3.5 books for the most interesting, most relevant feats you can find you've got to go back and pick up pointless stuff like Dodge or Flick of the Wrist or something. I also wonder if four, distinct, and equally worthwhile styles can even be created with the feats as presented in 3.5. Note, this is more of a critique of 3.5 feats in general than it is of your homebrew.

nonsi

2010-12-09, 03:59 PM

Honestly that is in large part attributed to hit points. Broken glass might do something like 1d3 damage. ie it can seriously injur or hurt a commoner, but ANY high level character can chew on/swallow it at whim with relatively little trouble.

"chew broken glass just for the heck of it" was just a metaphor.

…Though I believe the maneuver that allows you to negate one effect on you is below 5th level, and thus available to the Fighter…

1. IHS is articulated in a manner that allows loopholes exploitation.
2. You don't design a class fix that relies on mechanics that are known to be unacceptable by many DMs out there.

This would be true if I were designing a Fighter just for myself, in which case I might want to make it more heavily focused on tanking/control. But the Fighter isn't just that to most people. Since the beginning its halmark has been the flexibility to be anything you want it to be. There is nothing wrong with a redesign of the class taking that into account.

See below my reply to Ziegander on the flexibility issue.

My point is that choice in of itself is not a bad thing. The ability to screw yourself by making a bad choice is not bad.

It is when you have no other alternatives available as fall back like everyone else.

Most noncasters don't, or those that do have immunity to meaningless things like disease, and rely on enchantments/items for things like mind blank and immunity to death effects.

A lot of PrCs do and I see no reason why a base class should be overall any less capable than a PrC.

Isn't the reason most people prefer 3e over 4e that 3e has a lot more flexibility? I really don't understand what your problem is with players having a choice with regards to their class features, allowing them to customize the character to what they want.

See below my reply to Ziegander on the flexibility issue.

Go all offensive on damage abilities, and you've still got a d10 hp and high fort to fall back on.

Conditions ignore HP and not all of them can be resisted with Fort-saves.

And the in between doesn't require 'a lot of maneuvering'. Again, that's the beauty of the design, it's made as a primary generalist.

1. The martial adepts are still better off.
2. The martial adepts still barely keep up. The combat dudes deserve more (but not in a cinematic way).
3. Many DMs won't adopt the mechanics.

gkethellar already made this argument better than I could.

He definitely had some good points, but you don't have to move in the same manner as a specific technique to enjoy similar benefits (for instance, in Karate your defensive technique involves collision-based blocking (analogous to the Dau's heavy tip) while Ninjitsu & Aikido practitioners rely on soft and fluid diversion by "going with the flow" (analogous to the Katana's flowing slashess) – the styles are different, but the benefits are quite similar).

That same argument can be applied to anything. "You can't use that spell, you didn't prepare it" "Yes I did, I changed it this morning!" "It's not on the spell list you gave to me" "But I told you I changed it" "But you already used the other spell you had listed for that slot!" "No I didn't, I told you I changed my mind!"

Sure, but things that are changed on the fly have more impact.
That's one of the most significant problems of the maneuvers system. Why add more overhead ?

Also, I'm not registering an account on another forum just to download some file to read your fix. I'm anti-downloading things on principle anyway, needing to register for it means unless you actually post it somewhere I'm not likely to ever see it.

Suit yourself, but it's your loss.
ENWorld registration is the fastest I've ever had to take. In return you gain access to the only popular RPG boards I know of that allow uploading files (saves you tons of work formatting directly when editing your posts).
Plus, there are a lot of goodies in my HR beyond a fix for the Fighter.

Nonsi is of the opinion that choice = bad

Nonsi is of the opinion that choices are good and lots of choices are great, just not the choice of shooting yourself in the foot in a manner that would leave you high & dry.
My fix has about 20 times more choices than the core Fighter – both in-build and in-play. And that's on top of being Tier-3 out of the box.

He also is of the opinion that his Warrior is the best Fighter fix of all time.

Not exactly, just as far as I've seen so far, but I'm not waving any flags, I stole from a kazillion and one other fixes.
Btw, it was finalized about 3 months ago, so you're probably not up to date.

I remember this class way back in the day. One problem I have with it is that there really aren't enough GOOD feats to make this design worthwhile. If feats were better, or if there were legitimate Fighter only feats, a design like this could rock. But since the majority of feats are things like +1 and +2 bonuses rather than new combat options, utility, or defenses once you've mined through all 30 of your 3.5 books for the most interesting, most relevant feats you can find you've got to go back and pick up pointless stuff like Dodge or Flick of the Wrist or something.

Exactly my point. Which is why someone who's both not a spellcaster and not a skillmonkey really needs solid foundations.

I also wonder if four, distinct, and equally worthwhile styles can even be created with the feats as presented in 3.5.

My experience says that the inevitable conclusion is a solid "NO".

gkathellar

2010-12-09, 06:01 PM

He definitely had some good points, but you don't have to move in the same manner as a specific technique to enjoy similar benefits (for instance, in Karate your defensive technique involves collision-based blocking (analogous to the Dau's heavy tip) while Ninjitsu & Aikido practitioners rely on soft and fluid diversion by "going with the flow" (analogous to the Katana's flowing slashess) – the styles are different, but the benefits are quite similar).

Saying "all martial arts have blocking techniques" is like saying "all the people I know have skin."* The question is, does one of those blocking techniques use Robilar's Gambit when the other doesn't?** The point of my argument was that having different styles that do a different mix of things and aren't easy to switch between makes logical sense, and it doesn't look like you're refuting that.

Also that's not really how dao works and I've never seen good kenjutsu that was particularly flowing and I have seen good kenjutsu, but that's a different question for a different thread.

*Apologies in advance to any people you know who don't.
**My point is: yes.

Seerow

2010-12-10, 06:20 PM

Nonsi:

"chew broken glass just for the heck of it" was just a metaphor.

And it was a bad one. Regardless the point you were trying to get across is the Fighter should seem like a badass no matter what route he takes. My counter argument is yes, he does. And so does any other high level character. You don't need retarded over the top effects to play well.

1. IHS is articulated in a manner that allows loopholes exploitation.
2. You don't design a class fix that relies on mechanics that are known to be unacceptable by many DMs out there.

The class fix doesn't rely on it, but it can take advantage of it. If it was relying on it I'd be giving it Iron Heart Surge as a baseline ability, which seems to be what you want.

It is when you have no other alternatives available as fall back like everyone else.

You're joking, right?

A lot of PrCs do and I see no reason why a base class should be overall any less capable than a PrC.

A lot of PrCs don't. A lot of base classes don't. Many do. Many others have the option to. I am considering making an option for what you're looking for, but your incessant need to have everything baseline makes no sense to me. There is simply no need for it.

Conditions ignore HP and not all of them can be resisted with Fort-saves.

Nope, several target will. A Fighter can actually get a pretty decent will save if he tries for it. Or if he's still worried he can pick up optional features that allow him to work around it.

1. The martial adepts are still better off.
2. The martial adepts still barely keep up. The combat dudes deserve more (but not in a cinematic way).
3. Many DMs won't adopt the mechanics.

1) Martial Adepts are shoehorned into a single fighting style. For the most part they can't handle archery, or mounted combat outside of homebrew. So no, they are not better off in terms of flexibility. There will be situations where the Fighter can shine, where a Warblade would be left in the cold.
2) Martial Adepts are fine. You've said yourself that's the balance line we should aim for. Wizards and other full casters are simply out of control. Bringing any non-caster up to a well played Wizard's level is simply unfeasible.
3) Sorry, why would I worry about targetting unflexible DMs when working on homebrew?

Sure, but things that are changed on the fly have more impact.
That's one of the most significant problems of the maneuvers system. Why add more overhead ?

How do they have more impact? If you have a lot of problems with things like that I'm inclined to call it a group problem.

Suit yourself, but it's your loss.
ENWorld registration is the fastest I've ever had to take. In return you gain access to the only popular RPG boards I know of that allow uploading files (saves you tons of work formatting directly when editing your posts).
Plus, there are a lot of goodies in my HR beyond a fix for the Fighter.

*shrug* I don't download random things off forums as a rule, and I'm not about to register on a new forum just to break that rule.

Nonsi is of the opinion that choices are good and lots of choices are great, just not the choice of shooting yourself in the foot in a manner that would leave you high & dry.

And you've yet to show me an example of a Fighter who with this build can shoot himself in the foot without trying (ie taking the same feat in multiple combat styles). You can't make a fix on the assumption everyone who plays is an idiot while at the same time balancing around a well played full caster.

My fix has about 20 times more choices than the core Fighter – both in-build and in-play. And that's on top of being Tier-3 out of the box.

Really? From what you've said your fix focuses on the Fighter as the tank, the guy who takes a ton of punishment on the front lines. That's not everyone's vision of the Fighter. Sounds pretty inflexible to me.

My experience says that the inevitable conclusion is a solid "NO".

Your experience? Have you actually tried?

ziegander

The "BK's Warlord" he's talking about is a class I made years ago, on the Wizard's forums under the nom de plume bkdubs123. It's somewhat similar to this class actually, but it gets fewer feats and more significant class features. Instead of switching between stances to access its feats it sought to separate the feats into four tiers of power with Epic feats being sprinkled into tier 3, and highly prevalent in tier 4.

Well looks like brilliantgameologists is back up, so I can look at it now.

Looks like a similar deal, except the feats as you mentioned, and the Combat focus has no cooldown, but takes a move action rather than a swift action to enter, and the warrior focus abilities are all prechosen for you. So the focus is stronger at low levels, weaker at high levels, and as far as I can tell offers no synergy with the combat focus feats out of PHB2.

neat extra features out of the fix I could see turning into combat focus abilities: Tremulous Steps, Through the Haze, Shellshock, True Threat.

Getting epic feats early seems like an interesting deal also. I may go look at the epic feat prereqs, and see if I can't work something like that into learning ease. That would likely even help with filling out the combat styles fully. (something like +1/4 fighter level to effective level or BAB for purposes of qualifying for feats. Might cause some weird things like getting improved TWF early, but if it kicked in at like level 15 it shouldn't cause any major problems)

Nonsi is of the opinion that choice = bad, so you're not going to convince him there. He also is of the opinion that his Warrior is the best Fighter fix of all time and seems always to link to it in every Fighter fix thread he sees. But anyway, since he thinks that choice is bad he's telling you that your class needs better class features.

Yeah I gathered as much.

I remember this class way back in the day. One problem I have with it is that there really aren't enough GOOD feats to make this design worthwhile. If feats were better, or if there were legitimate Fighter only feats, a design like this could rock. But since the majority of feats are things like +1 and +2 bonuses rather than new combat options, utility, or defenses once you've mined through all 30 of your 3.5 books for the most interesting, most relevant feats you can find you've got to go back and pick up pointless stuff like Dodge or Flick of the Wrist or something. I also wonder if four, distinct, and equally worthwhile styles can even be created with the feats as presented in 3.5. Note, this is more of a critique of 3.5 feats in general than it is of your homebrew.

Yeah I understand that. On the other hand, with this you don't necessarily need to find the most interesting feats in the game to be worthwhile. Those little +1 and +2 bonuses add up quickly. When you can as a free or immediate action switch stances and pick up something like 5 AC, some damage reduction, and increased saves, that's fairly meaningful.

I'm pretty rusty and need to spend some time reacquainting myself with the feats, but I remember several examples being posted on the old forums of fully fleshed out styles

Examples of potential styles:
-Full on defensive
-Two Weapon Fighting
-Two Handed attacking
-Melee control
-Ranged (bow/crossbow)
-Ranged (thrown weapons)
-Mounted Combat

Potentially combining several of these niches into one style if you have too much overlap. And this is not including the general feats you'll want regardless of style (your combat focus feats, improved initiative, things like that) for your baseline 7 feats and the first 2 feats you get pre style branching.

Opening up tome of battle just makes it nicer, since you can pick up three maneuvers in each style (since you only have one style at a given time, martial study's limit of 3 isn't broken), though I'd imagine you don't want to have that many in all styles, particularly those that aren't melee focused, the option is there.

Ziegander

2010-12-10, 08:44 PM

Examples of potential styles:
-Full on defensive
-Two Weapon Fighting
-Two Handed attacking
-Melee control
-Ranged (bow/crossbow)
-Ranged (thrown weapons)
-Mounted Combat

No offense to you, but I question the viability of the two-weapon fighting, thrown weapons, and mounted combat (ignoring uberchargers) styles. And if they are as ineffective as I suspect, that really only leaves us with Defensive, Two-Hander, Melee Control (which I must add is already quite powerful with just the normal Fighter/Warblade), and Bow/Crossbow (crossbow only being possibly good because of a few really new feats). So that's four viable styles for a class that's expected to have four styles. That's not exactly the kind of flexibility that we want.

Now that I think about it, especially with some of the final feats to come out of random 3.5 splatbooks right before its departure, those four styles are surely viable, but really only those four (and probably a Fear/Intimidate build too, which may or may not be imbalanced). You'll be strong and flexible, and with your normal feats you get from leveling you should be able to shore up your weaknesses and/or pick up utility (kind of). But that's not my problem with the class. My problem is that it's still boring (for me).

nonsi

2010-12-11, 11:26 AM

Regardless the point you were trying to get across is the Fighter should seem like a badass no matter what route he takes. My counter argument is yes, he does. And so does any other high level character. You don't need retarded over the top effects to play well.

What “retarded over the top effects” did you see me talk about ?

The class fix doesn't rely on it, but it can take advantage of it. If it was relying on it I'd be giving it Iron Heart Surge as a baseline ability, which seems to be what you want.

Yes, this is what I’m talking about.
At 6th level and on (past mortal realm), I see no justification for a warrior – any warrior – not to have such an ability (which has nothing to do with one’s combat style).

A lot of PrCs don't. A lot of base classes don't. Many do. Many others have the option to. I am considering making an option for what you're looking for, but your incessant need to have everything baseline makes no sense to me. There is simply no need for it.

Throughout all this exchange, I never talked about (or hinted) immunities.

Nope, several target will. A Fighter can actually get a pretty decent will save if he tries for it. Or if he's still worried he can pick up optional features that allow him to work around it.

And if he doesn’t, then he’s practically a sitting duck when it comes to Will-based effects.

1) Martial Adepts … are not better off in terms of flexibility. There will be situations where the Fighter can shine, where a Warblade would be left in the cold.
2) Martial Adepts are fine. You've said yourself that's the balance line we should aim for. Wizards and other full casters are simply out of control. Bringing any non-caster up to a well played Wizard's level is simply unfeasible.

1. Statement #2 contradicts Statement #1.
2. Just to paint a clearer picture, my balance line for power & options is somewhere along the lines of a Swordsage-Warblade-Fighter gestalt (would still be tier-3), but without tying the Warblade’s features to an ability score and without depending on the maneuvers mechanics.

3) Sorry, why would I worry about targetting unflexible DMs when working on homebrew?

I’m not talking about unflexible DMs. Many DMs who are quite open-minded reject the mechanics from a point of view of practicality (bookkeeping) or simply don’t like the spirit of these mechanics.

How do they have more impact? If you have a lot of problems with things like that I'm inclined to call it a group problem.

Anything in the category of “now I can do it / now I can’t” slows the game down due to being another factor that requires bookkeeping.

*shrug* I don't download random things off forums as a rule, and I'm not about to register on a new forum just to break that rule.

Unflexible you said? Well, you doesn’t get any more unflexible than that. I wasn’t directing you to random things.
Wanna be pick headed about it – fine by me. Stay uninformed.

And you've yet to show me an example of a Fighter who with this build can shoot himself in the foot without trying (ie taking the same feat in multiple combat styles).

No need. Here’s a small demonstration:
Forcecage is an endgamer against most all combatants at any level (turns you into a sitting duck), unless you happen to know of an official warrior class with an extraordinary feature that can save you once this spell’s casting has been complete.
Ziegander’s Warlord has a shot of coping with this particular spell by 6th level.
Due to my view that no legendary warrior should be denied the chance of thwarting conditions, mine trails his by 2 levels on this one (and 8th level feels more appropriate to me for such a feature).

You can't make a fix on the assumption everyone who plays is an idiot while at the same time balancing around a well played full caster.

You haven’t seen my version, so how can you even guess my assumptions ?
And how did you conclude I’m balancing around a well played full caster ?

Really? From what you've said your fix focuses on the Fighter as the tank, the guy who takes a ton of punishment on the front lines. That's not everyone's vision of the Fighter. Sounds pretty inflexible to me.

FYI, I never considered (or hinted) using anything similar to the Crusader’s ability to soak damage.

Your experience? Have you actually tried?

I don’t have to.
I totally agree with Ziegander that the class is boring.
Piling it with 3 times as many feats, given feats don't scale, won’t make a huge difference.

Seerow

2010-12-11, 12:37 PM

No offense to you, but I question the viability of the two-weapon fighting, thrown weapons, and mounted combat (ignoring uberchargers) styles.

Two Weapon Fighting's biggest problem is it has no benefit except on a full attack. iirc a feats out of PHB2 fixed that. If I'm wrong about that, there's still focus abilities that help with two weapon fighting, from the generic take a full attack as a standard action (useful to anyone even if they don't focus on TWF), to the more specific abilities like dual weapon mastery or two weapon mastery. Master of Arms also helps here, because you can stack your weapons heavier with +d6 effects, and get things like speed, keen, and wounding through master of arms.

Thrown weapons are a decent alternative to ranged weapons particularly for someone focused on a strength build. Their biggest problem is the feat intensity. Someone else already pointed out several feats that help it. (edit: Looked back and that was apparently you lol) The other big problem is itterative attacks. iirc there's an enchant that brings the weapon back to hand after each attack, but thinking on it, I'm not sure if that was something I had homebrewed or not, because I know a lot of thrown builds carry around a ridiculous amount of ammunition. I know that Returning is in core, but doesn't kick in until the next round.

Mounted combat isn't -good- but it is decent situationally. It is the most questionable style I listed by a fair margin though. Does it actually have any support at all outside of core? Still having the ability to pump out much higher than normal numbers when outside of a dungeon (or in a dungeon that can comfortably house large creatures) is a decent benefit.

But that's not my problem with the class. My problem is that it's still boring (for me).

Well explain to me, what makes it boring to you? In building the class, you have plenty of options in everything. As you get to higher levels, if you're right, those options will become more similar among different fighters, but the focus abilities still stay unique, and are what gives the Fighter's primary focus.

In play though, it's even less boring. You have a lot more to manage. You are doing cool things, and doing so frequently enough that it doesn't feel particularly repetitive. You're changing styles to suit the situation, you're managing your focus, which has a more valuable passive benefit than in your fix, so it's a more significant choice if you want to expend it or not.

There's a few individual focus abilities that are boring, that I'd like to go back over and address. But as a whole I'm not sure what the complaint is.

What “retarded over the top effects” did you see me talk about ?

You keep talking about how you want to be comparable to a Wizard. You're not going to achieve this without something retarded and over the top. Sorry, nobody mundane is going to compete with the guy who can gate in balors and wish for anything, or send you to a different dimension with no save, or any other such thing.

Throughout all this exchange, I never talked about (or hinted) immunities.

Throughout you've constantly complained about how the Fighter isn't resilient enough. You have a d10 hp, a high fort save, a +6 extra to will easily obtainable through feats (+4 of which you almost certainly will get regardless). You can expend your focus for a +1/2 fighter level bonus to any save. You have the option to take Height of War for immunity to Fear effects and the ability to reroll a roll of your choice by expending focus.

With all this you've still complained about not being resilient enough. When confronted with IHS, you complained that it was a questionable ability. So pretty much all that is left is immunities.

1. Statement #2 contradicts Statement #1.

Yes it does when you cut out half the statement of statement one and take it out of context. Statement 1 says that Martial Adepts are not better off than this Warrior in terms of flexibility. While the Martial Adept has plenty of options, they're all focused completely on melee. The Fighter's options are more generalized. Statement 2 says despite that, Martial Adepts are fine. Different take, same power level.

2. Just to paint a clearer picture, my balance line for power & options is somewhere along the lines of a Swordsage-Warblade-Fighter gestalt (would still be tier-3), but without tying the Warblade’s features to an ability score and without depending on the maneuvers mechanics.

lol okay.

I’m not talking about unflexible DMs. Many DMs who are quite open-minded reject the mechanics from a point of view of practicality (bookkeeping) or simply don’t like the spirit of these mechanics.

Again, what we have here is less bookkeeping than any caster, and most martial adepts. So I'm really not certain what your complaint on this is.

As for people who simply dislike the mechanic, I can't do anything about that, anymore than the D&D designers can do anything about people who refuse to look at psionics because they don't like it.

Anything in the category of “now I can do it / now I can’t” slows the game down due to being another factor that requires bookkeeping.

So any spell or martial maneuver.

Unflexible you said? Well, you doesn’t get any more unflexible than that. I wasn’t directing you to random things.
Wanna be pick headed about it – fine by me. Stay uninformed.

Honestly given your attitude I'm pretty sure I'm not missing a whole lot regardless. If you had your stuff posted anywhere easily accessible that's one thing. I'm not going out of my way to see what your glorious fix is. Especially when everything you've demonstrated as far as your design philosophy goes is completely against my own. While it might prove useful for finding new potential options to introduce, I doubt you'd have the effect you intend.

No need. Here’s a small demonstration:
Forcecage is an endgamer against most all combatants at any level (turns you into a sitting duck), unless you happen to know of an official warrior class with an extraordinary feature that can save you once this spell’s casting has been complete.
Ziegander’s Warlord has a shot of coping with this particular spell by 6th level.

*goes to the Warlord* *looks at level 6*

"Tide of Battle (Ex): A Warlord of 6th level or higher may spend an immediate action to voluntarily end his Combat Focus and take a move action"

How does this get you out of a Forcecage? And if it somehow does, would Active Assault not accomplish the same thing?

I looked through the rest of the class in case the ability came at a different level and I had missed it and saw nothing that would get around a force cage. To get around a force cage, you need a rod of cancelation, disintegration, the ability to be larger than the cage can hold, or teleport. I don't see that anywhere in the warlord.

You haven’t seen my version, so how can you even guess my assumptions ?
And how did you conclude I’m balancing around a well played full caster ?

Based on the complaints you've made here.

You've since claimed you're balancing around a gestalt Warblade/Swordsage/Fighter, which while not as bad as a well played Wizard, is still a much higher power level than I care to look into.

I don’t have to.
I totally agree with Ziegander that the class is boring.
Piling it with 3 times as many feats, given feats don't scale, won’t make a huge difference.

Which is why feats aren't the only thing it got. The feats simply help a lot with the baseline issues. And they do that job fairly well.

Seerow

2010-12-11, 02:28 PM

Updated the OP. Made the previously mentioned change to learning ease, having it also apply to skill checks, and a feat to gain the level 10 version to extra ability scores if you really want to.

I cleaned up a few of the focus powers some more, haven't added any new ones yet.

Added Weapon Versatility, still want to add at least 3 more stance options, but not sure what. I'm thinking one that is something like increases strength mod to damage, but not sure if that's strong enough on its own. The trick is making a stance useful to damage dealers without making easymode ubercharger damage levels.

As an aside, while looking through feats, I rediscovered Steadfast Determination, which is yet another feat the Fighter can likely afford to help shore up his lacking will defense. Between that, the Combat Focus line of feats, and if you still feel lacking, Iron Will, you're running a higher will save than just about anyone else as a baseline (a priest may beat you), and you still have the ability to gain a +1/2 fighter level bonus to it if you really need it, baseline.

Ziegander

2010-12-11, 05:47 PM

Two Weapon Fighting's biggest problem is it has no benefit except on a full attack. iirc a feats out of PHB2 fixed that. If I'm wrong about that, there's still focus abilities that help with two weapon fighting, from the generic take a full attack as a standard action (useful to anyone even if they don't focus on TWF), to the more specific abilities like dual weapon mastery or two weapon mastery. Master of Arms also helps here, because you can stack your weapons heavier with +d6 effects, and get things like speed, keen, and wounding through master of arms.

True. So Two-Weapon Fighting is probably a little better off than I thought. It might actually blossom into a decent enough style.

Thrown weapons are a decent alternative to ranged weapons particularly for someone focused on a strength build. Their biggest problem is the feat intensity. Someone else already pointed out several feats that help it. (edit: Looked back and that was apparently you lol) The other big problem is itterative attacks. iirc there's an enchant that brings the weapon back to hand after each attack, but thinking on it, I'm not sure if that was something I had homebrewed or not, because I know a lot of thrown builds carry around a ridiculous amount of ammunition. I know that Returning is in core, but doesn't kick in until the next round.

The thing is, yes there are thrown weapon feats, but I don't believe they are helpful enough to actually make the style worth a damn. You can spend all the feats on it you want, and when you're done you still aren't doing anything more productive than throwing your weapon for below average damage every turn.

Does it actually have any support at all outside of core?

As far as I know it does not.

Still having the ability to pump out much higher than normal numbers when outside of a dungeon (or in a dungeon that can comfortably house large creatures) is a decent benefit.

I have to disagree with that. If you're spending a whole slew of feats to deal even up to double damage, and get maybe a +4 bonus to hit in situations where you are able to mount up, I'm sorry that is not worth spending the feats on.

Well explain to me, what makes it boring to you? In building the class, you have plenty of options in everything. As you get to higher levels, if you're right, those options will become more similar among different fighters, but the focus abilities still stay unique, and are what gives the Fighter's primary focus.

I'll have to re-read the focus abilities before I can give you a proper feedback, but it's boring because, if I'm not mistaken, all the different styles you have DO is allow you to make attacks with a few different weapons that usually hit and deal damage. That appears to be substantially it. You have the "illusion" of options just like the normal Fighter class has the illusion of options. A Fighter has about three or four viable builds going for it, not counting builds made possible by ACFs. That's not exactly a wealth of options. This class is hardly much different. Instead of having four viable builds, it has, basically, one. This one build being the four builds viable for a standard Fighter, only all taken as each of the Fighter Redux's styles.

In play though, it's even less boring. You have a lot more to manage. You are doing cool things, and doing so frequently enough that it doesn't feel particularly repetitive. You're changing styles to suit the situation, you're managing your focus, which has a more valuable passive benefit than in your fix, so it's a more significant choice if you want to expend it or not.

Having a lot of things you need to micromanage isn't necessarily boring, but it also isn't necessarily fun. If all you can do is pull out a new weapon and full attack again that seems to be unfun. It might be effective but that's not what I'm after. Of course, it is your class so what I'm after counts for next to nothing at the end of the day.

There's a few individual focus abilities that are boring, that I'd like to go back over and address. But as a whole I'm not sure what the complaint is.

My complaint is that feats are boring, and because this class has a whole bunch of them and little else going for it, even switching between four sets of boring feats is still boring. Perhaps it needs more of the focus abilities, I'm not sure. I like the whole mechanic of switching between fighting styles, so the skeleton of your class is well designed, but because it is built on a poor foundation, 3.5 feats, it ends up a little boring. Yes, you can take maneuvers from ToB with your styles, which definitely does help some, but that's just using an already established and dynamic system to make the character less boring. Again, I'm not arguing that the class isn't effective - I'm sure it can be - but it feels like it would be sort of boring to play.

EDIT: Wow, just gotta say, this Fighter and my Warlord are really, really similar. Not accusing you of stealing anything by any means, it's just kind of ironic. But then again, I think you started this guy way back when I was first working out the Warlord, so I suppose it makes sense. And another thing, for all of my criticism of this class, I'm not at all saying I like my Warlord any better. I've written a full two other fighter fixes since finishing the Warlord.

Seerow

2010-12-11, 06:56 PM

EDIT: Wow, just gotta say, this Fighter and my Warlord are really, really similar. Not accusing you of stealing anything by any means, it's just kind of ironic. But then again, I think you started this guy way back when I was first working out the Warlord, so I suppose it makes sense. And another thing, for all of my criticism of this class, I'm not at all saying I like my Warlord any better. I've written a full two other fighter fixes since finishing the Warlord.

Yeah I noticed the same when I looked at your warlord. That's why I thought it would be really easy to port some of your class features over as focus abilities. The main difference is I have a set cooldown, as opposed to regain it anytime with a move action in yours. I feel that makes the choice more meaningful, and also lets the Fighter feel much stronger at higher levels when he can do it more often. Yes he doesn't feel as incredible at low-mid levels, but the Fighter doesn't need as much of a boost at those levels, where a single feat still is a meaningful power boost.

I'm assuming that edit came after going back and reading some of the focus abilities. A lot of the focus abilities had influences from people like Frank/K or Otto, who were pretty prevalent back then, so it's not hard to see where we ended with similar results. I'm curious though, after rereading those, do you feel better about the class? I've been emphasizing since post one that people need to actually read those to see the options made available, and highlighting ones that apply to peoples specific problems.

True. So Two-Weapon Fighting is probably a little better off than I thought. It might actually blossom into a decent enough style.

Yeah. I also went ahead and added in a new feat, after my last post. A power attack-esque feat aimed more towards the two weapon fighters, or anyone else who isn't using a two hander. Rogues, Scouts, and other such classes would probably also enjoy access to that feat.

I have to disagree with that. If you're spending a whole slew of feats to deal even up to double damage, and get maybe a +4 bonus to hit in situations where you are able to mount up, I'm sorry that is not worth spending the feats on.

But spending 3 feats out of 39-40 seems like less of an investment. Doubling your damage on a charge is a big deal especially if it comes as a part of the power attack/shock trooper/leap attack style.

But like I said, it is the most questionable style by a fair margin. It's also highly campaign dependent. If your DM likes big war scenarios where you ride out mounted to meet a host of enemies, or even if he just dislikes dungeon crawls, the mounted combat suddenly seems a lot more worth it. I know I've been in campaigns where I was scarcely off my horse.

Ziegander

2010-12-11, 07:06 PM

Seerow

2010-12-11, 07:25 PM

As far as the Warrior's Focus abilities are concerned almost all of the ranged ones are very, very cool and are exactly what these abilities ought to be doing. Very few of the others offer unique, utility options, instead they merely add bigger numbers onto your basic actions. Things like Active Assault and Height of Battle are sweet but are too few and far between. I would say that you ought to take a second look at basically all of the melee oriented Focus abilities and reimagine/redesign them so that they offer something unique and special.

I'll go back and take another look at the melee oriented ones then. I recognized several of them were pretty boring but wasn't sure what to do with them, but I hadn't realized it was basically all the melee ones. Adapt to Opponent in particular is pretty lame, even after my recent update of it.

I'm guessing stuff like status effects inflicted on expend focus, or forced movement.

On the other hand, some of them seem fine as relatively boring. A full attack action as a standard action for example seems worth it.

edit: Updated several of them. I found it relatively hard, 4e's system is really made for things like this, where you can add plenty of different status effects. I went back and looked at the conditions in the srd and found it sorely lacking in comparison. Double Weapon Master got an improved whirlwind effect. Shield Evasion was given the "end one effect on me" ability, Swashbuckling Tactics was given a potential daze effect, Take the High Ground was changed into a stronger push at higher levels, letting you literally take the high ground from an opponent. Two Weapon Mastery was given an ongoing rend effect, which I thought was a kind of neat effect to help two weapon fighters.

I'm considering changing double weapon mastery to be able to be used by any two weapons, since its expend effect is no longer something double weapon specific. Swift Strike and Charging Assault feel like they're overlapping. (Charging Assault being a pounce while swift strike is full attack as a standard) I'm really not sure what to do to differentiate them. Swift Strike may end up just getting scrapped, I dunno.

The only real boring effects left are Adapt to Opponent, which I still have no idea what to do with, but think the concept warrants keeping, and Master of Improvisation which seems like it might be better as a feat.

edit2: Out of curiosity what is the limit on post size on this forum? I'm nearly certain there is one, but I was really surprised to not hit it with this. Every time I edit new stuff in I expect to run into it...