[3.5] Fighter Remix: Doin' it old-school

[Okuno]

Must construct bigger wall!

What? Impossible!

My preference is that passing saving throws should be something that fighters are good at, all the time, regardless of build.

Woah, there. A stance like that could easily be read as "blaster wizards shouldn't be able to soften up the enemy", which is something no one wants. Combat shouldn't devolve into the fighters duke it out while the blasters waste 3/4 of their spells.

And yes, I know the marshal is a different case because that's the only thing it has going for it.

Yeah, very different case, since there's been a lot of effort here to give the fighter something going for it other than massive mental fortitude. I'm not even touching that part of the argument, it's going nowhere...

The remixed fighter obsoletes the rogue and paladin.

Yeah, I think I said I don't give about the paladin, whatever, but the rogue should be the skillmonkey. More on skill monkey later, though.

• Limit total kitfeats to 1, which must be taken when acquiring the 1st level of fighter.
• Limit the total kitfeats to 1, a limit that may relax with the acquisition of Second Style and Third Style.
• Grant the fighter his fighting style bonus with only one or two key skills of his choice, rather than all.
• Reduce/delay the scaling of the fighting style bonus.
• Convert Combat Aura to a competence bonus so it does not stack with the key skill bonus.

Of the list, 1 seems okay, add 4 and we're getting somewhere, though I don't think it needs terribly much dealy/reduce, as my suggested numbers demonstrated.

Now, as for five, it doesn't really solve the problem. However, if you do make it competence, I see no reason not to double the bonus granted. This would be fluffed as the fighter teaching and instructing his allies on-the-fly for a specific situation.

Over all, however, I agree with Tylenol and his assessment of the aura as a free lunch. The truth is, the aura should be used to get his party out of dire straights: it's far more cinematic and engaging that way. Time limits on the aura is the way to go to encourage players to do exactly this. I think I said 1 round per day per level, broken up as the fighter sees fit. You could add cha bonus to that, too (bonus, not modifier, I think)

Worth noting: I didn't mention this earlier because I wasn't directly his post, but Okuno's table contains an error. At levels 5, 9, 13, and 17, he lists the gp value and % of WBL for the skill bonuses at double what he should

Ooh, I was going to hate myself I had bungled that math <.< Luckily, I checked and I haven't. There are two places you could be missing the factor of two:
1) The table lists two items' total, so that would provide an extra 2. Since you've actually got four key skills, the problem so far is twice as tall as I make it out to be. 0.o It's just I was arguing w/ Tylenol over two skills at that point.
2) Since the bonuses don't eat item slots, they're worth twice as much, DMG table 7-33 again.
So, final formula is bonus squared *100 * 2 (no item slots) * 2 (two skills given bonuses) = bonus squared * 400. You'll find the numbers as listed correspond. Before it comes up, I did wonder about 2*2=3, but that doesn't apply since one of those multipliers is honest-to-goodness having a second thing rather than breaking the rules a second time.

If you've ever thumbed through the thread on my monk remix, then you know that I stake out a controversial position on skill bonuses.

Yeah, but you built that monk as a skillmonkey, and really, monks should do wuxia pre-epic, it's their flavor, for god's sake. So the monk's fine, but the fighter... he's a different story.

Eskimos would rather buy ice than buy magic items that grant large competence bonuses on skill checks.

Now I love hyperbole more than the next man, but it's not just gold we're talking about. And I have no idea why I didn't put it this way before: the opportunity cost recouped also includes skill points that would otherwise have been spent.

With four key skill bonuses as described (which approximate max ranks, btw), the fighter can spend his four skill points elsewhere. That means we're looking at a fighter gaining equivalent skill points equal to 8+int per level. That's skill monkey, plain and simple, and it doesn't fit the archetype that any of us are going for.

Also, I checked the daring outlaw, too. Even though he's the serious skillmonkey, he never gains a take 20 on any skill. Never even a free action feint. No, you really are obsoleting classes that shouldn't be made obsolete.

Ooh, sorta off topic, but why does your daring outlaw get the option of Devious Scoundrel at level 10 when clerics are casting freedom of movement three levels earlier? Ten minutes per CL of auto-success vs. try again once after a delay. Yeah, I know I argue later against bringing things up to caster abilities, but we have some universal application of logic fail here.

In fact, most "epic" uses of skills approximate the effects of 2nd or 3rd-level spells. Thus, gaining a class feature that moves your skill checks into the epic range by level 13 is...well, milktoast. I mean, really, imagine the conversations.

And let's be fair, a magic world ought to mean an anti-magic world. Items are dispellable, but key skill bonuses are not. Sure, this plays into the overpriced-skill-bonii argument, but I don't care about that one anymore, in fact, in my opinion, it's good that it plays in. What considering antimagic does is makes the key skills more desirable: now the DM can't plaster antimagic over the 50ft wide bottomless chasm and hope to stop the party.

It seems to me that what you're really saying though is that fighters shouldn't be better at skill use, even within their specialization, than members of other classes.

No, fighters can buy ranks like the rest of 'em. Any bonus gives them some sort of edge. If we're talking pure logic, then a bonus to a mainstream fighter ability implies a commensurate bonus to a wizard's spellcraft checks. If we're talking game balance, especially out-of-combat, some bonuses for the fighter are fine, not huge ones.

Instead, members of other classes should be better at using the fighter's skills than the fighter is. Am I correct here?

Aw, heeal nah! >.< Where'd that even come from? Because wizards subsume every other class by means of their spells? Suck it, they're T1, that's what they do, and you shouldn't make a T3 fighter try to best a broken class. Now, if you want to pull the wizards down... that I can dig.</not-my-accent>

Now, to deal with those quotes, as hilarious as they were, the underlying point that they demonstrate is flawed.
1) Sneaking isn't even a tertiary feature of the fighter: they don't sneak at all. Okay, maybe it's a tertiary of the cunning fighter, but...

Sneaking is for traitors and cowards, not big, manly men! hahaha ^o^

2) Same thing for scouting and enchanting

Come out and face me, coward!

Fowl enchantress! Begone, I'll have none of your silly tricks!

Seriously, you could see Legolas saying versions of these things... Gimli says all of them, IIRC.

The primary class feature for all fighters is, drum roll please: hitting things to death. It suits them, that's why we play fighters (or fighter-types anyway).
The secondary class features could include inspiration, cheating, defending, blah-dee-blah, but that's just it: they're secondary.

EDIT: "The wall isn't big enough, we need more power!"
"Don't worry Jim, I've got a pill for that."

I still don't think the answer is to give people a class with even more preferential alternatives to the Paladin

Yeah actually, the game balance would be vastly improved if you gave the cleric a mount, paired it's spell list to be more paladin-y, and called it the paladin. No one plays paladin, it's not a break point, and it's the break points that we're interested in here.

Bardic performance is the only unique feature of the Bard that sees a lot of play

Exactly, though bardic knowledge is good if you like make an attempt at not metagaming.

Skill Mastery can extend to all key skills (as it does normally), but the ability to "take 20" on a skill should only extend to the skill(s) that they choose to gain the competence bonus from.

Actually, I'ma go further on this one. Since the daring outlaw has no take 20s, I see no reason to give take 20s to the fighter. I'm not of the opinion that take twenty is something anyone should do before epic: remember it would be cramming twenty minutes into a few seconds usually. If I'm being generous, I'd let the rogue pick a skill from a shortlist at level 17+, he can take twenty on it once a day.

as the Pathfinder Fighter levels up, they gain a higher maximum dexterity bonus to their armor, as well as a lower armor check penalty.

Ooh, now that sounds bloody excellent. Maybe I should look into pathfinder. I definitely vote a yes on integrating this: it's pure archetype, makes RL sense, can't break anything or perturb combined arms, and it's something you want your fighter character to be able to do.

Small competence bonuses applying everywhere > large competence bonuses applying everywhere

I have no idea what you mean by that @.@ Edit, please? Oh, I can read the notation, but...

EDIT: I had the wrong quote in here, I think this is the one I meant.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is, "no-risk, good-reward" is a better trade than "high-risk, high-reward", even if the payoff is a little less, because you're getting everything for free and without repercussions for inappropriate choices or resource management.

Bang on, sir! but I do have to cite my sources, so yeah, I've integrated this point into the above argument.