Why Play a Fighter? (DND/Pathfinder)

[faceroll]

That's a bunch of basic skills that I ignore 'cause I can negate them with magic. Or in the case of Forgery, one I ignore simply because I can't afford it. And that's not even a very elaborate kit. This guy knows nothing. He has no wilderness skills. He can't make anything, he can't perform and he has no profession. And yet, system makes this much impossible, let alone anything resembling a swashbuckler you'd write into a story. Smooth-talking burglar type just has too many skills.

With 20 int, he can light and medium armor, bows, simple and martial weapons, crossbow, and high quality items. With an apprentice and MW tools, he can make exotic weapons, and with two apprentice, he can craft complex and superior items.

Anything more than +5 to craft is overkill, imo, unless you're looking to craft stuff very quickly.

[Zonugal]

They don't have nearly enough and they have the highest accumulation in the game. I've played a 20-Int Rogue with Nymph's Kiss (+1 skill per level; even got it houseruled to +4 on level 1) and still, when I wanted:

- Use Magic Device
- Hide
- Move Silently
- Balance
- Tumble

- Search
- Disable Device
- Spot
- Listen
- Sense Motive

- Diplomacy
- Bluff
- Intimidate
- Knowledge: Local
- Gather Information

Could I get all those skills? Nope. That's 15. I could max 13. Now, that's kind of a basic kit and notice skills that are missing:
- Appraise
- Climb
- Swim
- Forgery
- Use Rope
- Ride
- Open Lock

That's a bunch of basic skills that I ignore 'cause I can negate them with magic. Or in the case of Forgery, one I ignore simply because I can't afford it. And that's not even a very elaborate kit. This guy knows nothing. He has no wilderness skills. He can't make anything, he can't perform and he has no profession. And yet, system makes this much impossible, let alone anything resembling a swashbuckler you'd write into a story. Smooth-talking burglar type just has too many skills.

1st level Human Rogue with 20 int and Nymph's kiss?
Total: 60

• Hide 4 ranks
• Move Silently 4 ranks
• Disable Device 4 ranks
• Search 4 ranks
• Bluff 4 ranks
• Intimidate 2 ranks
• Diplomacy 4 ranks
• Climb 2 ranks
• Swim 1 rank
• Forgery 1 rank
• Appraise 2 ranks
• Jump 2 ranks
• Knowledge (Local) 2 ranks
• Gather Information 2 ranks
• Spot 2 ranks
• Listen 2 ranks
• Use Magical Device 4 ranks
• Sense Motive 4 ranks
• Use Rope 2 ranks
• Ride 2 ranks
• Balance 2 ranks
• Tumble 2 ranks
• Disguise 2 ranks

Doesn't look that bad, if a bit vague in its purpose/role.

[Paul H]

Hi

We seem to be a bit off topic - original asked about fighters. A dip to enhance is one thing, but.......

Suggest Cha 12 Fighter, take level of Bard (Savage Skald archetype) for the skill access. Or you could take Sandman (Bard archetype) to be able to disarm magical traps as a rogue.

Don't forget you can get 4 skill points/level as Human Ftr. (Ftr, Human, Favoured Class).

If we do change to another melee class, I suggest Synthesist (Summoner archetype). Just massive stat bonuses, abilities, skill points, spells (Haste is 2nd lvl) etc. Dip into fighter at 2nd lvl for weapon access & extra feat.
19HP at 1st level, with only 13 Con?

Thanks
Paul H
PS your GM might think Synthesists are a tad broken.

[The Glyphstone]

PS your GM might think Synthesists are a tad broken.

Your GM would be right. But that's a topic for another thread.

[Paul H]

Hi

Strange thing is, Synthesist is legal for PFS campaign!

Synthesist 2/Paladin 3/Dragon Disciple xxx is one build. Transform into a Gold Dragon & smite away!

Thanks
Paul H

[Curious]

Your GM would be right. But that's a topic for another thread.

I would join that thread. Why is Synthesist so broken?

[Paul H]

Hi

Moved to other thread. (Coidzor's link below #132)

Thanks
Paul H

[The Glyphstone]

Wrong thread.

[TheJake]

I'm not saying Fighters can't or shouldn't deal damage, I'm just saying people are using the wrong yardstick to measure the success of a Fighter.

My view of a successful fighter is whether or not the fighter was able to keep the other PCs alive and allowing the wizard to pull off Twin Quickened Summoned Elemental Monoliths, clerics DMM persisting Divine Power, etc.

Everyone says the fighter is underrated - I disagree, although they are underpowered.

Think of it this way, when a Fighter does his job well, everyone knows it. When a Fighter DOESN'T do his job well, everyone REALLY knows it.

- J.

PS: PHB2 went a long way to fixing the class.
PPS: There is a Taunt mechanic. It's galled Goad and its permissible as a Fighter feat, but you do need high CHA to pull it off ;)

[Coidzor]

My view of a successful fighter is whether or not the fighter was able to keep the other PCs alive and allowing the [...] clerics DMM persisting Divine Power [...]

...What possible contribution would the Fighter make at the beginning of the day while the party is prepping spells and the DMM Persist Cleric is putting on his make up?

[TheJake]

...What possible contribution would the Fighter make at the beginning of the day while the party is prepping spells and the DMM Persist Cleric is putting on his make up?

Ok, poor example because I'm at work and distracted - but I think the point is there.

- J.

[Coidzor]

Done. Thread created.

[noparlpf]

...What possible contribution would the Fighter make at the beginning of the day while the party is prepping spells and the DMM Persist Cleric is putting on his make up?

He could cook breakfast?

[Coidzor]

He could cook breakfast?

but fighters don't get skillpoints or profession: cook! He'll poison them all with food poisoning.

[noparlpf]

but fighters don't get skill points or profession: cook! He'll poison them all with food poisoning.

Ooh. Right, Fighters don't even get Profession.
Craft (breakfast)? Does that count?

[Provengreil]

Hardly. Monster ignores fighter, walks past, kills wizard (which, according to charop boards, never happens, because all wizards are level 20 and invisible, flying and have all spells ready to cast always), then the fighter kills the monster a few rounds later.

Or, the wizard, spends his time using spells to avoid being hit (ironguard, invis, mirror image, etc), while over those rounds of self-buffing, the fighter kills the monster.

Just because the fighter takes 3 rounds to kill the monster, and the wizard gets killed in one round to the same monster, doesn't mean "the fighter isn't doing his job". It means the wizard needs to be smarter.

So the opening salvo of the winning strategy is to sacrifice the wizard?

seriously, absent tripping or a chokepoint, Fighters don't have a good locking down mechanic and this hurts the rest of the party far more than themselves if you put them into a true "meatshield" role. What's more, that's the best case scenario because others involve that AC being actually meaningless(touch attacks, targeted spells, etc.)

[Eldariel]

1st level Human Rogue with 20 int and Nymph's kiss?
Total: 60

• Hide 4 ranks
• Move Silently 4 ranks
• Disable Device 4 ranks
• Search 4 ranks
• Bluff 4 ranks
• Intimidate 2 ranks
• Diplomacy 4 ranks
• Climb 2 ranks
• Swim 1 rank
• Forgery 1 rank
• Appraise 2 ranks
• Jump 2 ranks
• Knowledge (Local) 2 ranks
• Gather Information 2 ranks
• Spot 2 ranks
• Listen 2 ranks
• Use Magical Device 4 ranks
• Sense Motive 4 ranks
• Use Rope 2 ranks
• Ride 2 ranks
• Balance 2 ranks
• Tumble 2 ranks
• Disguise 2 ranks

Doesn't look that bad, if a bit vague in its purpose/role.

Yeah, but level 10? You can only keep 13 of those skills up to speed. Like, level 1 works because of the 4x but when you keep leveling up, most of them will fall behind whether because you neglect them entirely or only advance them at half speed. And like, only having 2 points in Spot and Listen for example weakens the skills quite a bit since it's a -2 to see level-equivalent hiding targets.

[noparlpf]

Just wondering, but how does a human get 20 Int at first level?

[Zonugal]

Yeah, but level 10? You can only keep 13 of those skills up to speed. Like, level 1 works because of the 4x but when you keep leveling up, most of them will fall behind whether because you neglect them entirely or only advance them at half speed. And like, only having 2 points in Spot and Listen for example weakens the skills quite a bit since it's a -2 to see level-equivalent hiding targets.

The problem is one of necessity and identifying a role. In pursuit of being ultimately versatile you are passing up specialization. Not all of those skills are required and very few need you to keep them maxed throughout your career.

[aart lover]

why play a fighter? cuz it's fun that's why. think of it: the rest of the party is getting mowed down by hand-crossbow snipers 1000 ft. away. what is the fighter doing while the everyone else is getting their asses kicked? bringing a giant sword down on the enemy's heads, that's what. and what is the fighter doing when everyone else is busy "strategizing"? Leeroy Jenkins'ing into the middle of action, taking names and grinding meat, that's what.

Wizard: ima gonna shoot off flashy little spells at you!

Fighter: *SPLORTCH* you were saying?

*end of rant, feel free to go on with your lives*

[The Glyphstone]

Wizard:
"ima gonna shoot off flashy little spells at you!"

Fighter: *SPLORTCH* you were saying?
Curse you, magus - I would make a loud "SPLORTCH" noise with you, if only you were not flying, invisible, displaced, astrally projecting, and/or attacking though a projected image."

Edited for accuracy. Alternatively:

Wizard: "I love scrying on my defenseless non-casting enemies, teleporting in, and obliterating them in a surprise round while fully buffed."

Fighter: *twitches*

[Midnight_v]

There are fighters that are built to lockdown like the A lil lock build for you and anyone who wants to play at being a "tank" has the work cut out for them but it isn't impossible. The truth is you have to figure out how to make a "sticky knight" and if you can figure out how to make one the breaks Line of sight to the people he's "protecting" then you kinda win at your job.
I think I like a fighter because it takes optimization skill to play one that works. I can't really take a cleric and push it to its limits so much cause thats makes people cry.
I can do that with a fighter though (well, sometimes... there are people who are going to cry no matter what).
A lot of the time I play fighter for the 2 bonus feats like most people. Though, I've used to to reach concept chars that I wanted to play, for instance once I wanted to play a char that I had in mind as "The genius w/the sword" and it took quite a bit to get what I wanted out of him beyond "I want a non-magic warrior w/a excessively high int" The warblde did it in pretty much completley
But... for a while it made the fighter interesting though.

I dont' have it on had but basically it used the
Education feat to get knowledge devotion
and took a bit of archery: 4-5 feats
It had the Shock-charger basic thing: 3 feats
And it had Robilars in: 3 feats
Oh and the skilll trick collector of stories.

I dont' think we got past level 12 but I'm sure that I could have added standstill or sidestep (or the tob one) and probbably fetch many shot along with the weapon weapon mastery/supremacy nonsense but the campaign ended for irl reasons.

I'd like to add that the zhent fighter has lingering demoralization that makes him better than the samurai in my book, having a clear Out of Combat use like that makes him a bit different in key ways.

Just my 2c.

[Psyren]

Well, I don't think you are playing 4e

Why would you? These aren't the 4e forums, and the thread was even labelled by edition.

Every time this discussion comes up I always see these responses, and continue to wonder what special RP comes from being a fighter as opposed to anybody else from an even sparsely martial background. Last I checked he's "a dude who fights".

With another look-over though, it seems the OPs problem is more with one trick pony martial characters rather than just fighter imparticular (though it's one of the most obvious examples). In which case yeah, ToB fixes a bit of that. Alternatively, play a Gish and get the best of both worlds!

Pretty much this

[The Glyphstone]

To be on-topic for once, when I play a Fighter, it's for the same reasons Jim in Darths and Droids plays RPGs in general - it lets me put my CharOp brain to sleep while I run on RP cruise control, safe in an environment where people think a wizard/sorcerer's spell slots of 6th-9th level (all of them) should be filled entirely with Disintegrate because rolling huge fistfuls of dice is so much fun.

[Lord_Gareth]

To be on-topic for once, when I play a Fighter, it's for the same reasons Jim in Darths and Droids plays RPGs in general - it lets me put my CharOp brain to sleep while I run on RP cruise control, safe in an environment where people think a wizard/sorcerer's spell slots of 6th-9th level (all of them) should be filled entirely with Disintegrate because rolling huge fistfuls of dice is so much fun.

This right here is my play group in real life.

God I hate them >.<

[Coidzor]

why play a fighter? cuz it's fun that's why. think of it: the rest of the party is getting mowed down by hand-crossbow snipers 1000 ft. away. what is the fighter doing while the everyone else is getting their asses kicked? bringing a giant sword down on the enemy's heads, that's what.

How is the fighter surviving if the rest of the party is getting killed off and the fighter is still well outside of charge range of the enemy anyway? It's not like he's got special abilities that help him run away.

and what is the fighter doing when everyone else is busy "strategizing"? Leeroy Jenkins'ing into the middle of action, taking names and grinding meat, that's what.

So, trolling the rest of the group then by intentionally getting the party all killed? That doesn't sound very nice.

[navar100]

The problem is, in 3.5 and Pathfinder, being a "meatshield" doesn't work very well. Just standing there gives no incentive for the enemy to attack you, instead of the guy flinging metric tons of arcane and/or divine energy around. By the time they're flying, they can totally bypass you.

Unless you want to introduce a "taunt" mechanic?

If you don't, making yourself a viable target via damage is one of your few options. That, or things like trip, disarm, etc that can inconvenience enemies.

Of course, that's all putting aside the fact that that's a very narrow view where you're telling other that they're "doing it wrong", when the class itself, especially in Pathfinder, is geared toward making a very wide range of archetypes and playstyles, only some of which would work as a "meatshield".

That is the DM metagaming. Bad guys attack the warriors because they are a threat. They are stabbing you with pointy sticks. They are there. That's all that matters. There are feats to hamper spellcasters, more so in Pathfinder. Defensive casting is harder in Pathfinder. Disruptive feat makes it harder. Step Up feat makes 5ft step back and cast tactic difficult to use. Stand Still feat makes moving difficult. At higher levels, warriors can take feats to cause extra effects on critical hits like bleeding or stunning.

Most people's problem is that warrior classes, and fighters in particular, are not Mary Poppins. They have hissy fits that they are not practically perfect in every way, incapable of defeating every monster everywhere single handedly in every situation imagineable. They cannot fathom they are not supposed to, despite the alleged ability of spellcasters being able to. Spellcasters can't either. Maybe they can, hypothetically on paper, given access to every sourcebook ever published. The reality is spellcasters do not know every spell ever published, nor have them all prepared when they need it, and far more often than nil, monsters actually make their saving throws and spellcasters fail spell resistance checks.

[Maho-Tsukai]

Why do people play fighters? Because they are masochists. .....

... Or because they like the challenge of proving that a usually maligned class, if optimized right, can still be useful. Or perhaps because they want to play a non-spellcasting warrior type and don't like Tome of Battle's fluff. All of those strike me as the main reasons, really, though I can't say for sure since I'd never play a fighter myself.(Mainly because if I want a mundane swordsman I'll just use a Warblade instead.)

[Coidzor]

Bad guys attack the warriors because they are a threat.

Except when they're not, like a flurry of misses monk.

There are feats to hamper spellcasters, more so in Pathfinder. Defensive casting is harder in Pathfinder. Disruptive feat makes it harder. Step Up feat makes 5ft step back and cast tactic difficult to use. Stand Still feat makes moving difficult. At higher levels, warriors can take feats to cause extra effects on critical hits like bleeding or stunning.

So... the sheer amount of effort by paizo to provide some way to threaten casters is because casters aren't threats and melee is?

[Eldariel]

The problem is one of necessity and identifying a role. In pursuit of being ultimately versatile you are passing up specialization. Not all of those skills are required and very few need you to keep them maxed throughout your career.

That's the problem tho. That isn't a very versatile skill set yet. I find you should be able to max out a skill set of that size on a character dedicated to skills. Or dabble in far more. And yet, that's the character with the most skill points/level possible under 3.5 and it doesn't even come close. Trying to represent e.g. a classic swashbuckler's skillset (bluff, diplomacy, a bunch of knowledges, tumble, spot, listen, sense motive, balance, jump, swim, climb) as a D&D 3.5 character, you're going to lack points for many of them. Or a classic thief's. Or any non-caster archetype, really. Yes, you can circumvent the need for most of those skillchecks and trivially get magical bonuses sufficient to succeed at the rest but that's really besides the point.

Imho e.g. a swashbuckler-type should be able to max all those skills during his career; acrobatics, social grace & similar feats define the archetype. Instead, the system forces you to circumvent some perfectly ordinary skills like Climb, Jump and Swim with Fly simply to spare skill points for less replaceable skills (and of course, the skills being so easily replaceable is a pain too). A mundane character that isn't totally a slave of magic items should be able to at least have the physical movement skills & the perception skills (and hopefully something that somehow ties to the character's specialization too) and yet the skill system makes this completely impossible by being insanely stingy with the skillpoints.


Then there's the things you don't really use during the adventure much, such as Crafts, Professions and such and you never can afford any of those since the skill system gives you far too few points to actually fill out And Knowledges. All standard 10 of them (and then some). And Speak Language and Appraise and Forgery and what-have-you. The skill system is very expressive and versatile but the system completely throws away all potential it has by ensuring you can only excel at a small handful of things.