The "Why Didn't I Think of it Before?" Fighter Fix

[Endarire]

Greetings, Playground!

Instead of trying to fix the Fighter class, I figured I'd fix his feats in a quick or/and dirty style. For every [Fighter] bonus feat, remove all feat prereqs but keep all other prereqs like BAB, skill ranks, or [Epic] status.

Ta-da!

And this goes for the feats, meaning every creature can benefit from smaller feat chains!

(I swear God inspired me with this. Thanks, Dad!)

[Lord_Gareth]

It's been tried before. It fixes nothing.

Say it with me everyone: Warblade is the Fighter fix. Warblade is the Fighter fix. Warblade is the Fighter fix.

(To be more specific, the thrust of the problem is that feats are infinitely worse than Real Actual Class Features, and even in the ELEVENTY BAJILLION feats in 3.5 there are not enough - even without pre-reqs! - to help the Fighter overcome their essential flaws and rise above T5. The hypothetical Fighter With Every Feat In the Game that some poor bastard statted out barely managed to be T4, and it was a pretty pathetic T4 at that.)

[vasharanpaladin]

It's been tried before. It fixes nothing.

Say it with me everyone: Warblade is the Fighter fix. Warblade is the Fighter fix. Warblade is the Fighter fix.

This. A thousand times, this.

[nonsi]

Say it with me everyone: Warblade is the Fighter fix. Warblade is the Fighter fix. Warblade is the Fighter fix.

hmm... NO.
The maneuvers system is morphed Vancian spellcasting with no material/vocal components and held weapon(s) as focus.

Wrong flavor.

[Amnoriath]

(To be more specific, the thrust of the problem is that feats are infinitely worse than Real Actual Class Features, and even in the ELEVENTY BAJILLION feats in 3.5 there are not enough - even without pre-reqs! - to help the Fighter overcome their essential flaws and rise above T5. The hypothetical Fighter With Every Feat In the Game that some poor bastard statted out barely managed to be T4, and it was a pretty pathetic T4 at that.)

Actually, no, there are many feats with great options, and even multiple ones(tactical). The problem is with specifically the fighter bonus feats is that many of these feats aren't labeled fighter feats other than the must haves. I noticed this when I made my Incarnate Blade fix. I will concede though that feats are one of the most varied in terms of having actual good value, especially when set in stone and with so few in a character's career.

[Grod_The_Giant]

It also makes the fighter ridiculously difficult to build, since you now have to plow through all [arbitrarily high number] of feats in 3.5 to find the dozen-odd ones that are actually worth taking.

[Yitzi]

The problem isn't that the feats are too hard to get, it's that they're too weak. Instead of your idea, it would make more sense to do the opposite: Make feats that are as good as high-level class features and give them high prerequisites.

[Lord_Gareth]

hmm... NO.
The maneuvers system is morphed Vancian spellcasting with no material/vocal components and held weapon(s) as focus.

Wrong flavor.

Oh spare me, Nonsi. Every time Tome of Battle comes up you bring up the same tired statements about it, and every time we explain it to you the community gets blown off.

For the benefit of the OP: First and foremost, the Warblade is available free-and-legal from Wizards of the Coast here, and you can also find a free description of all Tome of Battle maneuvers - again free and legal from WotC themselves! - here. That's everything you need to play a Warblade, essentially, and if you have any confusion the community here is pretty conversant in Tome of Battle.

Secondly, I'll state this: yes, the typesetting of ToB maneuvers looks sorta like spells. However, they are not spells, especially in the Warblade's case. A Warblade is just like a Fighter in that both classes represent a martially-oriented character that gains unusual prowess from physical training and dedication to combat. The key difference is that the Warblade is actually capable of holding his own, whereas the Fighter is not. All of the stuff Warblades do with maneuvers, Fighters can already do with feats - it's just that the Fighter is forced to suck at it. Hit multiple enemies? A Fighter uses Cleave (maybe), but a Warblade just initiates Steel Wind. Throw your shield like Captain America? Fighter takes three shield feats from PHB II, but a Warblade just initiates Lightning Throw. The comparisons continue favorably.

If you'd like more Warblade or ToB information, feel free to PM me. I'ma stop de-railing your thread now, since I gave my useful critique in the post above.

[Yitzi]

Secondly, I'll state this: yes, the typesetting of ToB maneuvers looks sorta like spells. However, they are not spells, especially in the Warblade's case.

They might not be spells, but they play a lot more like spells. Well, at least the maneuvers do; stances are different, and hold far more potential in my opinion. (In fact, the fighter for the system I'm currently working on uses something that's sort of a mix between scaling feats, feat chains, and stances.)

All of the stuff Warblades do with maneuvers, Fighters can already do with feats - it's just that the Fighter is forced to suck at it. Hit multiple enemies? A Fighter uses Cleave (maybe), but a Warblade just initiates Steel Wind.

Whirlwind attack is a far better analogy than Cleave; it's harder to get than Steel Wind and takes a FRA, but is also quite a bit more powerful. Simply changing it to a standard action (or better yet, giving the fighter the ability to move and then take an FRA attack) would probably be enough to compete with Warblade on that aspect of things; if combined with the OP's idea, it would definitely be enough.

Throw your shield like Captain America? Fighter takes three shield feats from PHB II, but a Warblade just initiates Lightning Throw.

Lightning Throw is far more than just throwing your shield, and is fairly high level as a result. It's mainly useful for doing high damage to multiple targets, and that's a role that I feel should be the job of wizards (and evokers in particular). Of course, that requires making other wizards' abilities not even stronger (or banning them); an across-the-board boost to saves without a corresponding increase to save DCs (plus an additional boost for fighters' Reflex and Will saves, further helping the fighter) might be a good approach there.

The problem with ToB is that even if maneuvers are not spells, they feel too much like spells. Better to give fighters stuff that doesn't feel like spells (i.e. it doesn't have limited uses and you have a smaller number of options with another relatively small list of bonuses to take rather than a long list of options) and just boost that stuff to be at whatever tier you're looking for. Throw in the ability to get non-class-based minor abilities so that the fighter class can be purely about combat but fighters aren't useless outside of combat, and you should be able to make a fighter that's around tier 3 (maybe technically a very strong tier 4, but playable in a tier 3 group.)

[dspeyer]

Does Strikewright solve your too-much-like-spells problem?

[Yitzi]

Does Strikewright solve your too-much-like-spells problem?

It goes most of the way there, but 2+level is still a lot of options; I'd rather see something with fewer maneuvers known (and perhaps even fewer maneuvers knowable), but more stances, and with more potential insights but only a limited number usable at one time.

[Kane0]

I still have the Commonly Corrected Classes Compendium running if you want to grab some ideas from there, but I'd agree with most saying that there is no real quick n' dirty fix, and that ToB goes a long way to solving some of the Fighters worries.

[willpell]

Say it with me everyone: Warblade is the Fighter fix. Warblade is the Fighter fix. Warblade is the Fighter fix.

Yeah, no. Warblade has very different flavor from fighter; he's like the elite special forces commando to fighter's Marine grunt (which doesn't say that the grunt is weaker necessarily, only more of a general grounpounder without the highly specialized skills of the Tom Clancy hero, probably more useful in a straight up firefight and definitely so in a nonstop running battle, but less able to tackle rare and unusual high-stakes missions). Grabbing quotes from the Warblade fluff, a fighter is not a "sword prince"; ask some poor French peasant forced to slog through Napoleon's campaign whether he agrees with "Battle is beautiful". I like warblade flavor for a lot of purposes, but the warblade can't shine unless he has the fighter as background (Warrior doesn't cut it - in fact, given that fighter is so much weaker than warblade, it should probably replace Warrior as the default "no-class class" for NPC combatants).

A warblade gets three maneuvers at first level, and can't do one of them twice in a row (I'm pretty sure I saw a rule saying you can't ready one maneuver three times; they have to all be different). He has to overthink his battles a little, and there are some character concepts for which that's just the wrong flavor. Take for instance the half-black-dragon Fighter 4 in the Monster Manual; what maneuvers would you give him, to make up for the fact that you've disqualified him for his Weapon Specialization feat as well as taking away his 1st and 2nd level bonus feats? Maybe you could make him better for typical adventuring purposes, but he's not built for those purposes (and given that a typical adventurer is a sociopathic hobo with no skills to actually pay the bills and stay alive when there isn't a dungeon for him to loot, that's probably just as well for the half-dragon in question). He's there to be fought, and that means he needs to be good at fighting, no matter how often he has to fight in a given day. He does not need fancy tricks aimed at "covering himself in glory"; he just needs the ability to kill things quickly and efficiently, and for all its lack of versatility, few people complain that the fighter is not good at dealing damage (compared to anything that isn't Tier 1-2 at any rate).

[Hanuman]

In the world of magic and intrigue an adventurer needs more options than "I attack again."

Even in pathfinder fighters are better off just using compound bows.
I think fighters should ultimately be a leadership and support class, tank n spank while throwing out shouts to grant morale bonuses and setting up plays.

That being said, I find fighters terribly boring. I'd rather tome of battle 100% of the time.

[nonsi]

Oh spare me, Nonsi. Every time Tome of Battle comes up you bring up the same tired statements about it, and every time we explain it to you the community gets blown off.

1. What do you mean by that ?

2. Not every time. Definitely not every time. This is by no means an automatic reflex. Occasionally, when ToB comes up in Fighter Fix threads, I share my opinions. What triggered my response this time is the fact that you mentioned ToB to someone who's been here since 2004 and has "Bugbear in the Playground" status, so there's no way in the nine hells that he's unaware of ToB. Meaning, this thread is aimed toward a solution that doesn't directly involve ToB or the maneuvers system.

[LordErebus12]

Ever looked at the pathfinder version?

[willpell]

In the world of magic and intrigue an adventurer needs more options than "I attack again."

That is your opinion; I do not share it. For the default style of kick-in-the-door goblin exterminator, "I attack again" is exactly what he wants to do every single time; that's the whole reason you play such a character in the first place.

I think fighters should ultimately be a leadership and support class, tank n spank while throwing out shouts to grant morale bonuses and setting up plays.

Sounds something like a Marshal, war Cleric, or possibly an adjusted Bard of some sort.

That being said, I find fighters terribly boring. I'd rather tome of battle 100% of the time.

Fair enough, and sometimes I agree with you, but Tome of Battle makes playing a warrior suddenly almost as complex and demanding as playing a wizard, and sometimes I just want to bash face and get on with my day. The Warblade lets me do a higher-concept Fighter, just as the Warlock lets me do a simpler and more one-note Wizard if I'm not in the mood to study as though for a college course before playing. It is emphatically NOT a replacement.

[nonsi]

Ever looked at the pathfinder version?

The PF Fighter, compared to 3.5e's Fighter, has elevated stats and a total of 3 more feats.

Other than that, it suffers from all the problems as the core Fighter.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Grabbing quotes from the Warblade fluff, a fighter is not a "sword prince"; ask some poor French peasant forced to slog through Napoleon's campaign whether he agrees with "Battle is beautiful". I like warblade flavor for a lot of purposes, but the warblade can't shine unless he has the fighter as background (Warrior doesn't cut it - in fact, given that fighter is so much weaker than warblade, it should probably replace Warrior as the default "no-class class" for NPC combatants).

The ToB classes may have a bunch of fancy fluff, but that's mostly to conceal the fact that crusader, swordsage, and warblade were basically intended to be Paladin 2.0, Monk 2.0, and Fighter 2.0 (though the crusader ended up with a slightly different focus than the paladin). If you were to swap the flavor sections of the fighter and warblade, there would be literally no observable difference in-game regarding which class is the glory hound and which class is the tough mercenary or whatever, and no mechanical changes would be required either.

A warblade gets three maneuvers at first level, and can't do one of them twice in a row (I'm pretty sure I saw a rule saying you can't ready one maneuver three times; they have to all be different). He has to overthink his battles a little, and there are some character concepts for which that's just the wrong flavor. Take for instance the half-black-dragon Fighter 4 in the Monster Manual; what maneuvers would you give him, to make up for the fact that you've disqualified him for his Weapon Specialization feat as well as taking away his 1st and 2nd level bonus feats?

First of all, I wouldn't use that character anyway, since Exotic Weapon Proficiency, Weapon Focus, and Weapon Specialization are only possibly worth it at all in a core-only environment. If I had to make a warblade version of him, though, I'd probably go with Wolf Fang Strike, Steel Wind, Moment of Perfect Mind, and Punishing Stance, to replace Two-Weapon Fighting, Iron Will, and Weapon Specialization, and then swap the 12 Cha and 10 Int (since warblade is more Int-focused) and put the resulting skill points into Concentration for a +11.

The first two maneuvers are like TWF but work on a standard action, Moment of Perfect Mind gives him one Will save every few rounds at +11 that doesn't autofail on a natural 1, and Punishing Stance gives him +1d6 damage instead of +2 at the cost of slightly lower AC. On top of that, if he decides to go for a better weapon than the two-bladed sword, he can retrain the Exotic Weapon Proficiency and Weapon Focus to apply to whatever new weapon he chooses. I'd say the warblade version comes out ahead.

Maybe you could make him better for typical adventuring purposes, but he's not built for those purposes (and given that a typical adventurer is a sociopathic hobo with no skills to actually pay the bills and stay alive when there isn't a dungeon for him to loot, that's probably just as well for the half-dragon in question).

The "typical adventurer" being a sociopath with no skills is one of the fighter's major problems, which the warblade averts with its Int focus and better skill selection.

He's there to be fought, and that means he needs to be good at fighting, no matter how often he has to fight in a given day. He does not need fancy tricks aimed at "covering himself in glory"; he just needs the ability to kill things quickly and efficiently, and for all its lack of versatility, few people complain that the fighter is not good at dealing damage (compared to anything that isn't Tier 1-2 at any rate).

The warblade is good at fighting regardless of the number of fights in a given day; its maneuvers can be refreshed every other round if necessary and he doesn't have to ever stop fighting to do it.

That is your opinion; I do not share it. For the default style of kick-in-the-door goblin exterminator, "I attack again" is exactly what he wants to do every single time; that's the whole reason you play such a character in the first place.
[...]
Fair enough, and sometimes I agree with you, but Tome of Battle makes playing a warrior suddenly almost as complex and demanding as playing a wizard, and sometimes I just want to bash face and get on with my day. The Warblade lets me do a higher-concept Fighter, just as the Warlock lets me do a simpler and more one-note Wizard if I'm not in the mood to study as though for a college course before playing. It is emphatically NOT a replacement.

Nothing prevents a martial adept from just attacking again, and in fact a warblade needs to do that to recover maneuvers. You can actually build a warblade with all utility and defensive maneuvers and leave him to just use standard attacks for offense if you really want to.


As for the OP's suggestion, you can go even farther than that and remove all prerequisites including BAB and epicness, and it could do some good at the mid levels. The Martial Monk ACF technically lets you take epic feats if you read it one way (since monks don't have to meet any prereqs for their bonus feats), and in threads on various forums where people ask "Okay, assuming that reading works, what are the most powerful feats the monk can take with this?" even 6th-level monks with three epic feats don't overpower near-level spellcasters. Distant Shot, Infinite Deflection, Exceptional Deflection, Devastating Critical, and similar seem like pretty nice class features for a martial class at, say, 12th-14th level, given what casters are capable of then.

But as Lord_Gareth mentioned, even epic feats are not a good substitute for Actual Class Features once you get past the mid levels. The four feats mentioned above basically boil down to "hit anything you can see," "be immune to small projectiles," "deflect spells," and "SoD on a crit," which can be done or approximated with scrying+long range spells, wind wall, ray deflection and/or spell turning, and any SoD, all of which are mid-level caster tricks; if those are epic fighter feats, what is he supposed to do when casters hit 8th and 9th level spells?

[Yitzi]

That is your opinion; I do not share it. For the default style of kick-in-the-door goblin exterminator, "I attack again" is exactly what he wants to do every single time; that's the whole reason you play such a character in the first place.

To me, though, it seems that a fighter should (just from a fluff perspective) be a more versatile combatant with more options (even if not of the wizard-ish variety), with the barbarian (or a barbarian-like fighter variant) being the "kick in the door and just keep attacking" sort.

[willpell]

The first two maneuvers are like TWF but work on a standard action, Moment of Perfect Mind gives him one Will save every few rounds at +11 that doesn't autofail on a natural 1, and Punishing Stance gives him +1d6 damage instead of +2 at the cost of slightly lower AC. On top of that, if he decides to go for a better weapon than the two-bladed sword, he can retrain the Exotic Weapon Proficiency and Weapon Focus to apply to whatever new weapon he chooses. I'd say the warblade version comes out ahead.

Being better is not the point. And trading "2 damage" for "1d6 damage and lower AC" is not a trade I'd make; I would reliably roll only 1s and 2s and thus be worse off. If it was trading 2 damage for 2d3, then I'd do it, because the odds of turning out worse would be tolerably low, and the chance of a big payoff, though significantly lower, would still make the game more interesting. But that "1" is the kiss of death. A 16% chance of getting metaphorically punched in the doubly-metaphorical berries is not worth any amount of potential upside.

The "typical adventurer" being a sociopath with no skills is one of the fighter's major problems, which the warblade averts with its Int focus and better skill selection.

But it's completely in flavor for the Fighter. And raising the Warblade's skills to x4 is not much of a fix for the kind of warrior-philosopher he wants to be. Though personally I am increasingly inclined toward raising every single class-skills multiplier by 2 in my games, just because I like being able to get things like Perform and Sense Motive and Survival strictly for flavor reasons.

To me, though, it seems that a fighter should (just from a fluff perspective) be a more versatile combatant with more options (even if not of the wizard-ish variety), with the barbarian (or a barbarian-like fighter variant) being the "kick in the door and just keep attacking" sort.

Barbarian has a very specific fluff due to his skills selection; he is a wilderness survivalist as well as a warrior. Fighters are more urban, more dependent on civilization (if not to participate, then to predate). They are *both* "kick in the door and keep attacking" sorts, and they both need to be able to take any action the situation demands, without having to refer to a list and see which of their options are still exhausted until they go out of their way to recover them.

[enderlord99]

hmm... NO.
The maneuvers system is morphed Vancian spellcasting with no material/vocal components and held weapon(s) as focus.

Wrong flavor.

...How can a mechanic, isolated from anything else, have the "wrong flavor?" It doesn't have any flavor! Sure it's similar mechanically to spells, but that isn't flavor. The flavor is... uhh... whatever you want it to be, honestly.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Being better is not the point.

Oh? Being better is not the purpose of a fighter fix?

And trading "2 damage" for "1d6 damage and lower AC" is not a trade I'd make; I would reliably roll only 1s and 2s and thus be worse off. If it was trading 2 damage for 2d3, then I'd do it, because the odds of turning out worse would be tolerably low, and the chance of a big payoff, though significantly lower, would still make the game more interesting. But that "1" is the kiss of death. A 16% chance of getting metaphorically punched in the doubly-metaphorical berries is not worth any amount of potential upside.

First of all, I don't see how you think you can roll less than a 2 on 2d3; turning out worse doesn't have "tolerably low" odds, it's physically impossible. Second, though I realize that you think statistics is a lie, the average damage for 1d6 is 3.5, which is certainly an improvement, particularly when you consider that the +1d6 is 1/6 of a warblade's 1st-level class features while the +2 is all of a fighter's 4th-level class feature.

But it's completely in flavor for the Fighter. And raising the Warblade's skills to x4 is not much of a fix for the kind of warrior-philosopher he wants to be. Though personally I am increasingly inclined toward raising every single class-skills multiplier by 2 in my games, just because I like being able to get things like Perform and Sense Motive and Survival strictly for flavor reasons.

It's completely in-flavor that the fighter is useless outside of combat, but again, that is one of the parts of the fighter that most needs fixing. 4+Int skill points from a good list which includes Diplomacy, Knowledge, and Tumble is better than 2+Int skill points from a bad list.

Barbarian has a very specific fluff due to his skills selection; he is a wilderness survivalist as well as a warrior. Fighters are more urban, more dependent on civilization (if not to participate, then to predate). They are *both* "kick in the door and keep attacking" sorts, and they both need to be able to take any action the situation demands, without having to refer to a list and see which of their options are still exhausted until they go out of their way to recover them.

1) Given your earlier comment about the adventuring day, it seems that you think the warblade has some sort of daily limit to his maneuvers, but that isn't the case; as mentioned before, every single expended warblade maneuver is no more than 1 round away from being usable again.

2) It's all very well and good to say the fighter can take any action the situation demands, but fighters can't actually always do that. If the situation demands for a character to hold off an army attacking him, for example, the fighter might possibly have Whirlwind Attack, if he sunk 5 feats into it and has good Dex and Int, while the warblade can easily pick up Mithral Tornado with a single maneuver slot--or the superior Adamantine Tornado, also with a single slot. Much better for one of the warblade's nine known tricks to be Mithral Tornado, usable every other round, than for the fighter to have Whirlwind Attack as his one known trick available every round.

[Yitzi]

Barbarian has a very specific fluff due to his skills selection; he is a wilderness survivalist as well as a warrior.

True. That's why I said "or a barbarian-like fighter variant", i.e. something that gives up the feats for a barbarian's rage and tanking ability. (Perhaps give up the feats for a d12 hit die and rage, associated powers, and DR as a barbarian); he doesn't get the barbarian's noncombat abilities, but also gets access to heavy armor and tower shields which the barbarian doesn't.)

and they both need to be able to take any action the situation demands, without having to refer to a list and see which of their options are still exhausted until they go out of their way to recover them.

There I'd agree. However, even if the fighter doesn't have an exhaustible list, at least some of his abilities should give new options beyond "just keep attacking in melee". Playing a fighter should have a tactical element, though not as much bookkeeping as a wizard or cleric.

[willpell]

...How can a mechanic, isolated from anything else, have the "wrong flavor?" It doesn't have any flavor! Sure it's similar mechanically to spells, but that isn't flavor. The flavor is... uhh... whatever you want it to be, honestly.

No, the flavor is whatever explanation best corresponds to the mechanics. If you have a magic blast spell that deals double damage to wood objects and causes other wood objects touching those directly targeted to also take the damage, and continue taking damage and spreading the effect for several rounds, this is obviously a fire spell. If you try to claim it's sonic instead, and BS a justification for why wooden objects are "catching sound" instead of catching fire, you are being a munchkin and trying to cheat the system by getting a harder-to-resist damage type onto a power that was designed solely and specifically to be fire-flavored.

You could make an argument for something fairly close to this effect to be something other than fire - if damage spreads from creature to creature then it's probably a disease, or maybe some sort of poison that turns the victim's bodily fluids to acid or something - but in every case there are specific mechanics tied to the flavor, such as a disease being curable by paladins, and you cannot just ignore those mechanics in the name of "refluffing"; if you want the refluff then you have to do the extra work of adjusting *everything* to match the new reality you are simulating, or else your rules no longer simulate anything and are just arbitrary restrictions on player choice.

Making the game reflect reality enough to provide a degree of versimilitude, thus enhancing the enjoyability of this activity we perform only for recreational purposes, is a requirement which every DM must fulfill to the best of their ability. Sometimes full simulationism is too tall an order, and you have to accept that some corners must be cut for practical reasons (such as ruling that all creatures occupy square spaces and take their actions sequentially in six-second blocks). But there's a fine line between making concessions to practical difficulty, and just being lazy (or pretending to be lazy while having an even more ignoble motive, such as a munchkin's desire to "win" at the expense of his so-called friends).

So no, the flavor and mechanics are NOT separable, not unless they're both very poorly created. Quality in such creations is virtually synonymous with the extent to which they perfectly reflect one another.

Oh? Being better is not the purpose of a fighter fix?

No, it's not. It is the purpose of creating a prestige class or something that you would take instead of taking fighter levels. The tier system is not supposed to exist; in theory, choosing between fighter or wizard is supposed to be a matter of personal preference. The purpose of a fighter "fix" is not to be better than a fighter, it is to *be a fighter* more effectively. And thus any fix which contradicts the "fighter feel" to even the relatively slight effect that the warblade does is not an improvement, it is an alternative.

First of all, I don't see how you think you can roll less than a 2 on 2d3

I didn't say you could. The tolerable worseness was replacing "2 damage" with "2 damage and a penalty to AC".

Second, though I realize that you think statistics is a lie, the average damage for 1d6 is 3.5, which is certainly an improvement, particularly when you consider that the +1d6 is 1/6 of a warblade's 1st-level class features while the +2 is all of a fighter's 4th-level class feature.

It doesn't matter how many class features the warblade is getting instead, if he is worse at doing the only thing I care about. (Which is true for the sake of this example, though not necessarily for actual play; again, the half-black-dragon fighter is not a PC, he is an obstacle for the PCs, and thus being effective at his narrative role is important, while having the option to go off the plot rails is not. He doesn't need versatility, he needs reliable results.)

It's completely in-flavor that the fighter is useless outside of combat, but again, that is one of the parts of the fighter that most needs fixing.

That's not a "fix", that's missing the point. If you don't want to play a fighter then don't play a fighter. Play a warblade instead, I'm fine with that - but the warblade is NOT Fighter 2.0 any more than the Swashbuckler or Sohei or Factotum, he is a completely different type of warrior who uses quasimystical "blade meditations" to do things that a fighter cannot do, at the expense of not being as good at plain old fighting as an actual fighter. He is better in certain contexts, and a fairly good number of them; he is not a replacement.

1) Given your earlier comment about the adventuring day, it seems that you think the warblade has some sort of daily limit to his maneuvers, but that isn't the case; as mentioned before, every single expended warblade maneuver is no more than 1 round away from being usable again.

That 1 round could be the difference between life and death. If nobody is in range of a melee attack, the warblade who needs his maneuvers back has to stand there and do absolutely nothing in order to recover his magic. A fighter could instead pick up and throw a rock, or scream out a warning, or dance the funky chicken in an attempt to make the opponent stop and ask what the dickens he's doing; all of those might be more useful contributions than the warblade's "flourish" to recover his manuevers, but more to the point, they are his choice, not a mandatory part of the system. Which is most of my point - magicians have to jump through the hoops that the system requires of them in order to get their magic back. A fighter is just a guy with a sword and he can do any dang thing he wants, which is part of the point of playing a fighter; he has the basic rules and is designed to do well within those rules, not to staple on new rules to compensate for his original inadequacies. He has a good Hit Die, a good BAB, and Weapon Proficiencies, and that is all he needs. The Warblade has those things plus more stuff.

[Grod_The_Giant]

That 1 round could be the difference between life and death. If nobody is in range of a melee attack, the warblade who needs his maneuvers back has to stand there and do absolutely nothing in order to recover his magic. A fighter could instead pick up and throw a rock, or scream out a warning, or dance the funky chicken in an attempt to make the opponent stop and ask what the dickens he's doing; all of those might be more useful contributions than the warblade's "flourish" to recover his manuevers, but more to the point, they are his choice, not a mandatory part of the system. Which is most of my point - magicians have to jump through the hoops that the system requires of them in order to get their magic back. A fighter is just a guy with a sword and he can do any dang thing he wants, which is part of the point of playing a fighter; he has the basic rules and is designed to do well within those rules, not to staple on new rules to compensate for his original inadequacies. He has a good Hit Die, a good BAB, and Weapon Proficiencies, and that is all he needs. The Warblade has those things plus more stuff.

Err... point of fact, a Warblade:
a) recovers his maneuvers by attacking; ie, the same thing that a normal fighter does every turn. It's an obnoxiously good mechanic, but there you go.
b)can do everything a fighter can. he's got the same BAB, a bigger hit die, still has plenty of bonus feats, even qualifies for fighter-only bonus feats.

If I may ask... do you see the fighter as an NPC-only class or something? Because that's the impression I'm getting from your arguments here.

[Lord_Gareth]

Err... point of fact, a Warblade:
a) recovers his maneuvers by attacking; ie, the same thing that a normal fighter does every turn. It's an obnoxiously good mechanic, but there you go.
b)can do everything a fighter can. he's got the same BAB, a bigger hit die, still has plenty of bonus feats, even qualifies for fighter-only bonus feats.

If I may ask... do you see the fighter as an NPC-only class or something? Because that's the impression I'm getting from your arguments here.

I'm getting the impression that he thinks that a Warblade is somehow impaired in the CHARGE AN FULL ATTACK environment, which is patently untrue, but I'm afraid I'm going to bow out of this thread; I find myself incapable of saying anything aside from this post that would be a positive contribution instead of volcano-like nerd rage.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

No, it's not. It is the purpose of creating a prestige class or something that you would take instead of taking fighter levels. The tier system is not supposed to exist; in theory, choosing between fighter or wizard is supposed to be a matter of personal preference. The purpose of a fighter "fix" is not to be better than a fighter, it is to *be a fighter* more effectively. And thus any fix which contradicts the "fighter feel" to even the relatively slight effect that the warblade does is not an improvement, it is an alternative.

The warblade doesn't contradict the fighter feel in the slightest. You can't both claim in one paragraph that all the fighter does is attack, attack, attack, with no tactics or fancy capabilities, and then claim that the fighter is better because he can do "any dang thing he wants." If the fighter is all attacks, all the time, then you have no grounds to complain about the warblade not making any "useful contributions" in some rounds, since a fighter who can do nothing but roll attack rolls isn't making many useful contributions either; if the fighter is all about improvising and tactics, then you have no grounds to complain about maneuvers, since they provide rules for exactly the fancy tactics the fighter can supposedly perform.

It doesn't matter how many class features the warblade is getting instead, if he is worse at doing the only thing I care about. (Which is true for the sake of this example, though not necessarily for actual play; again, the half-black-dragon fighter is not a PC, he is an obstacle for the PCs, and thus being effective at his narrative role is important, while having the option to go off the plot rails is not. He doesn't need versatility, he needs reliable results.)

The warblade has BAB and saves equal to the fighter's, better HD, proficiencies, and skills than the fighter has, and more selectable abilities than the fighter does, each of which is superior to a feat obtained at comparable levels. Heck, the only thing the fighter has that vaguely resembles a class feature, fighter-only feats, the warblade can pick up as well. How can the warblade possibly be worse at the fighter's job than the fighter?

As for PC vs. NPC effectiveness, "versatility" doesn't solely mean ability to affect the world, it also means adaptability and ability to handle challenges. An NPC facing 4-to-1 odds who can move up to the best position to attack two PCs is superior to one who can't move and attack twice in the same round; an NPC who has a 70% chance to pass the save against the PC casters' sleep or color spray is superior to one who only has a 20% chance. Wizards don't suddenly suck as NPCs because they have a narrative role to fulfill, and neither do warblades.

That's not a "fix", that's missing the point. If you don't want to play a fighter then don't play a fighter. Play a warblade instead, I'm fine with that - but the warblade is NOT Fighter 2.0 any more than the Swashbuckler or Sohei or Factotum, he is a completely different type of warrior who uses quasimystical "blade meditations" to do things that a fighter cannot do, at the expense of not being as good at plain old fighting as an actual fighter. He is better in certain contexts, and a fairly good number of them; he is not a replacement.

The difference being, of course, that the sohei and factotum do different things than the fighter does, whereas the warblade does exactly the same thing the fighter does but better.

That 1 round could be the difference between life and death. If nobody is in range of a melee attack, the warblade who needs his maneuvers back has to stand there and do absolutely nothing in order to recover his magic. A fighter could instead pick up and throw a rock, or scream out a warning, or dance the funky chicken in an attempt to make the opponent stop and ask what the dickens he's doing; all of those might be more useful contributions than the warblade's "flourish" to recover his manuevers, but more to the point, they are his choice, not a mandatory part of the system.

As Grod pointed out, throwing a rock is an attack and dancing is a flourish, both of which would recover a warblade's maneuvers. In fact, since the fighter is apparently all about attack, attack, attack, the warblade can't be worse than a fighter in that instance since the fighter would just be attacking in that round anyway.

[vasharanpaladin]

Err... point of fact, a Warblade:
a) recovers his maneuvers by attacking; ie, the same thing that a normal fighter does every turn. It's an obnoxiously good mechanic, but there you go.
b)can do everything a fighter can. he's got the same BAB, a bigger hit die, still has plenty of bonus feats, even qualifies for fighter-only bonus feats.

If I may ask... do you see the fighter as an NPC-only class or something? Because that's the impression I'm getting from your arguments here.

It's true, it does, and it is. Simple fact of the matter is... fighters have been useless since wizards came out.

[Yitzi]

That's not a "fix", that's missing the point.

On the one hand, you are absolutely correct: The fighter class is about fighting, and so all its benefits should give boosts to fighting.
On the other hand, there is something to be said for letting each character have options in various areas, both from a gameplay perspective (so he's not sitting out half the time) and a simulationist perspective (the second son of a nobleman might have become a fighter...but it's quite reasonable that he'd still have picked up some diplomatic skills as well, even if they have nothing to do with his class.) IMO, the best way to deal with that is to provide background-based boosts independent of class. (This also lets you separate the barbarian's wilderness capabilities from the berserker style of fighting, making for more character building options.)