[Seerow]

Slightly off topic, earlier today I decided to roll up a Fighter using the current rules, but with picking/choosing skills, feats, and abilities, rather than taking the preselected packages. Just thought I'd share

Spoiler

The character:

Spoiler

Used Invisible Castle to roll a set of stats, got this: invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/3656456/

So going with Human Fighter 5 I have:

Attributes: (Base -> Class/Race -> Level 4 bonus)
Str: 9 -> 10
Dex: 17 -> 20
Con: 13 -> 14 -> 15
Int: 11 -> 12
Wis: 12 -> 13 -> 14
Cha: 11 -> 12

Background trained skills: Stealth (+8), Open Locks (+8), Spot (+5)
Level up trained skills: Bluff (+4), Sleight of Hand (+8). If trained skills can't be used to gain new skills and can only improve skills (this seems unclear in the packet), instead Stealth goes up to +10.
Trait: Undecided. Probably Hearth and Home to keep things simple, or Contact, since I'm practically a spy who traded bluff for open locks.

Feats:
1) Arcane Dabbler (Detect Magic, Mage Hand)
3) Hold the Line

Combat Superiority Dice: 2d8
Fighting Style
1) Jab
3) Shift
5) Push

Gear:
-Whip (2gp)
-Shield (10gp)
-Longbow (50gp)
-100 arrows (5gp)
-Leather Armor (10gp)

73gp remaining for clothes plus assorted other mundane gear.


Hit Points: 44
Armor Class: 17
Initiative: +5
Movement Speed: 30

Melee Attack: +9 1d6+5
Ranged Attack: +9 1d8+5




The character plays as a more defensive oriented rogue. In melee combat, he will take advantage of the ability to Dodge, using Jab to still attempt to make a hit. He will use Shift and Jab in combination with this ability to either interpose himself between an enemy and his allies, or to push the enemy away from his allies, if they are already there. He then uses his hold the line feat to stop any enemy trying to move through his reach to the enemy. Any enemy attempting to attack the character is running up against an AC of 21, and is likely to be wasting their turn. The character has good Con, Dex, and Wisdom, the three abilities that all spells currently in the game target, making him harder than usual to take out via alternative means as well.

In Ranged Combat the character lacks options, but he can put out a decent amount of hurt (with deadly strike averages about 18 damage per shot) with the highest hit bonus in the game from a distance that will take most creatures at least 2 rounds to cover.

Out of combat, the character fills the general role of the rogue. He makes a solid scout and guard, with exceptional stealth and above average spot, and can get through locked doors with ease. He can't deal with traps effectively, however ideally that's a skill the wizard would pick up, assuming there's no rogue in the group. The character can also detect magic and use mage hand at will, which are handy utilities to have, and may be something the Wizard passes up in favor of at will attack spells. If I wasn't grabbing that, I'd probably go with either Rapid Shot (for ranged minion clearing) or Ambusher (to complement his stealth) instead. Or maybe skill training if the level up skill increases can't be spent to get new skills

So things I noted while making this character:
-I originally wanted to go with a rapier, but when using jab there's really no way to justify not using the whip. Even without using jab, reach in exchange for 1 point of average damage is a pretty big trade off, especially when using something like hold the line.
-Cherry picking abilities gave a little more flexibility because I wasn't saddled with any of the really bad options (in the standard packages, each option has at least one bad pick I'd not want to take willingly). As it was I felt like I got everything I really wanted, and it came down to whether I wanted Push or Prone, though being able to have snap shot as well would have been nice.
-Specialties in general were really underwhelming. Very few things really jumped out at me as must have. Limited reactions meant I only wanted one feat from the guardian theme, and there really weren't any options for a normal melee combatant, to take. So the extra feat got put towards turning the fighter into a caster because it seemed the most useful utility of the bunch.
-At level 2, the only thing this character (and any fighter) gets is +1 hit die, and 1 trained skill. That's pretty boring, especially if the level up skill training only lets you get a +1 to a background skill. Level 4 is similarly pretty boring, except you also get a +1 to hit.
-A lot of the time, as a dex based Figher, the character was being defined as "Like a rogue but....". I could see the character coexisting with a rogue nicely (Out of combat, the rogue picks up more of the int/cha based skills, along with stealth, and aims for a 14 in those. In combat the rogue is much more offensive than this fighter pumping out much more damage while the Fighter does his best to keep anything from touching the rogue. Especially by the time the Fighter has Push and the Rogue has hit-and-run), but I think that to some degree we just associate dex with rogue and str with fighter, despite IMO dex making for the more effective Fighter (unless you only want pure damage in which case str is marginally better)
-The stat array I rolled seemed really good, but when I added it up it was just a 29 point buy. I could have gone with the 25 point buy that the array is generated from and just dropped int/cha a bit more, and gotten the same thing. This little exercise did not alleviate any concerns of humans being too strong.