What would a T1 Fighter look like? Lets Invent Something :)

[Paulcynic]

If we were to close the power gap between a Wizard and a Fighter by upping the Fighter's power, what would that look like. By JaronK's definitions, a T1 class has "game breaking" abilities, so what could we give to/do with the Fighter without changing his flavor? I suppose the abilities would have to be Extraordinary or Supernatural.

This might be a fun exorcise :) Here are a few guidelines:

1. The essence and play-style of the Fighter must be preserved.
2. No Spell-like abilities (Sp) or Spell casting.
3. Please indicate what level you expect an ability to come into play.
4. Silly is ok :) So long as it helps him climb toward T1.
5. PEACHers welcome, but please be Helpful, and thoughtful in your critiques. (Please Evaluate and Critique Helpfully!)

[Seerow]

What you ask for isn't actually compatible with your limitations.

[NeoSeraphi]

One thing that makes Tier 1 so powerful is they are far less item-dependent than the lower tiers. (Artificer being the obvious and quite awesome subvert of that statement)

In order for a fighter to be closer to the tier 1s, he would need an extraordinary or supernatural flight speed, to keep up with his enemies. He would also need more skill points and more useful skills such as Knowledge, Diplomacy and Disable Device as class skills.

The fighter would need ways to deal with invisibility, regeneration, damage reduction, incorporeality, magical forcefields, aquatic, and planeshifting creatures.

Edit: I don't know enough about the Pathfinder system to tell you what levels I think these should come into play at. By the way, you should specify you're talking about Pathfinder in the OP in order to help your responses.

[SamBurke]

OH BOY.

1. You time travel until you can find and apprehend Achilles.

2. ????

3. Profit.

Really, you are looking for someone like Achilles or some other Greek Hero. Those dudes were BADASS. The Fighter should be able to jump hundreds of feet as a move action, attack once in every square, and power up for massive damage on impact. He should be completely invulnerable to all damage, from all sources, EVAR. Every slash should deal +100 damage. He should be able to summon massive armies of men, angels, and demons with the power of his presence. He should be able to pierce any effect by hitting it hard enough. He should be able to destroy the very core of the earth by slashing it!

Note to self: Never write posts while listening to Two Steps from Hell.

[NeoSeraphi]

A tier 1 character has to (with the arguable exception of the cleric) be able to nova. Tier 1 characters are described as having 1000 nukes, to the tier 2's 100 nukes. Now damage itself is not what makes a tier 1 tier 1, but having that option certainly helps.

I suggest making the fighter's attacks deal an extra 1d6 damage per level. That way he's dishing out 60-80d6 per round at 20th level (which, without the Maximize feat, is around the same amount of damage that spellcasters can drop, especially considering it's a single target rather than an AOE effect)

The ability to hide in plain sight would be nice as well, help the fighter sneak and gain concealment.

[Xefas]

A tier one Fighter would look something like this.



His weapon damage approaches infinity. Unless he actually begins to try. He doesn't teleport, but he does grab the planet he's on and heft it to the side until he's where he wants to be. When a scorpion roughly the size of human suffering uses an ability on him that reads "You die, and nothing can stop it. No save. You can't even block this with things that say you can block stuff that can't be blocked.", he just kind of laughs and then uses its corpse as a vessel to fly onward to the end of time and gut the absolute oblivion of all things in order to use its viscera as a beard warmer.

And he does this without magic. Because he's just kind of strong and tough and good at doing things.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Hmm... I'm going to say he'll look a lot like this guy:

Spoiler

Show

No, seriously. At the very least, the golden-age Superman. You're going to need ridiculously crazy physical mobility- maybe a class level squared bonus to jump, balance, tumble, climb, and so on. An equally enormous bonus to damage. The ability bypass all forms of damage reduction. Senses good enough to make cover and invisibility meaningless.

[Dienekes]

Well I'm not sure by what exactly you mean by "the essence and play-style of the Fighter" but I imagine this would be close to a tier 1 (and completely ridiculous) Fighter:

Remember Tier 1 is not about just being able to break the world, it's about having a million ways to do so.

If we keep the Fighter's basic concept around I think it would be something akin to:
Fighter's may choose to learn 3 feats per level, every level. Each morning the Fighter may choose 3+his level feats to be able to use for that day.

This'll give him around 30 options, not exactly on par with the Wizard and so forth but closer. So to make it even fairer makes these feats scale in some way so that they're always useful.

You would then have to go the SamBurke route and actually buff up all these feats to insane levels. I'm talking making attacks against reality to plain jump. Having feats that essentially let you ignore entire skills. Jumping so high that you fly, without even needing to make a jump check. Hitting people so hard that they switch to your side because they just don't want to get hit anymore. And at later levels just hitting anyone and instead controlling some random guy in the back. You kick the ground and the terrain becomes difficult, then later it just disappears, or creates walls to protect you. The feat that let's you Intimidate reality itself into doing what you want. The feat that let's you ignore a spell, any spell. The feat that makes you immune to mind-control. The ability to kick Mother Nature so that she sends monsters to come help you because she doesn't want you to kick her again.

I'm sure you get the idea.

[Ziegander]

If we were to close the power gap between a Wizard and a Fighter by upping the Fighter's power, what would that look like.

1. The essence and play-style of the Fighter must be preserved.
2. No Spell-like abilities (Sp) or Spell casting.

These are the two real problems with the concept. I began coming up with fighter-flavored, (Ex) versions of Wizard spells in an effort to preserve the play-style of the Fighter and reach Tier 2. You might want to check the ideas out in any case.

I truly don't believe that it's possible to write a Tier 1 Fighter if you are trying not to use spells and trying to preserve the essence and play-style of the Fighter.

The core concept of the Fighter is that he fights. Tier 1 classes can fight if they want, but just one of the reasons that Tier 1 classes are Tier 1 is that they can overcome challenges without needing to fight. Tier 1 classes are able to do things that simply and utterly succeed. Those kinds of actions are contrary to the concept of the Fighter and yet are necessary for the Tier 1 level of power.

To put it another way, the essence of the Fighter is defined by the struggle and his ability to rise to the occasion and overcome. Meanwhile, the essence of Tier 1 is the ability to completely circumvent the struggle without any chance of failure.

[tempestman]

Extra striking ability, increasing armor effectiveness (defense- and mobility-wise), Damage Reduction (possibly?), scaling Armor Class (a-la monk class), allow them to deal maximum damage on non-critical hits, and to really get that "heroic" feel, every fighter gains a relic weapon at 1st level and ignores the various costs. Almost every hero in mythology had their signature weapon: Arthur's Excalibur, Heracles' club, Cu Chulainn's Gae Bolg, Charlemagne's Joyesue.

Granted that doesn't quite remove item dependency, but when they're getting a weapon that scales with them, I doubt the player will complain.

If you're giving the fighter DR, you might actually want to combine the Barbarian and Fighter (rename Rage Adrenaline Rush maybe?), cut out Trap Sense though, doesn't make much sense for a melee fighter.

I might make a rough draft of this...

Edit: To add some versatility to the fighter, marshal auras would be a good idea as well. Inspire others through acts of bravery.

[Shpadoinkle]

...

I'm sure you get the idea.

Sounds like the Muscle Wizard.

[SamBurke]

Extra striking ability, increasing armor effectiveness (defense- and mobility-wise), Damage Reduction (possibly?), scaling Armor Class (a-la monk class), allow them to deal maximum damage on non-critical hits, and to really get that "heroic" feel, every fighter gains a relic weapon at 1st level and ignores the various costs. Almost every hero in mythology had their signature weapon: Arthur's Excalibur, Heracles' club, Cu Chulainn's Gae Bolg, Charlemagne's Joyesue.

Granted that doesn't quite remove item dependency, but when they're getting a weapon that scales with them, I doubt the player will complain.

If you're giving the fighter DR, you might actually want to combine the Barbarian and Fighter (rename Rage Adrenaline Rush maybe?), cut out Trap Sense though, doesn't make much sense for a melee fighter.

I might make a rough draft of this...

Edit: To add some versatility to the fighter, marshal auras would be a good idea as well. Inspire others through acts of bravery.

Tier 3. You need to be able to imitate the Wizard's key abilities:

1. A large pool of abilities, which can be altered with a little bit of forewarning (we'll say 24 hrs.)

2. This pool of abilities, be it spells, powers, maneuvers, or anything else, should be able to reasonably deal with ALL threats, EVERY time, given 1.

3. The power of these abilities, IE, "Reasonably deal with" should be such that it equals or exceeds any other classes' normally optimized attempts at such an effect.

Basically, it should be able to be a:
Buffer, Debuffer, Striker, Tank, Scout, Diplomancer, Face, Shielder, Battlefield Shaper, Healer, if given 24 hrs. notice. EVERY one of these.

[jiriku]

A few basic ideas:

The T1 fighter:

...has attack options that automatically hit and deal damage that cannot be reduced or prevented. Although he can't defeat every defense with every sort of attack, he has ways of hitting you that can ignore your AC, saves, miss chance, cover bonus, range, lack of corporeality, and damage reduction. He has many attacks that can ignore more than one of these defenses, and a few that ignore all of them at once.
...gets awesome weapons and armor as a class feature. This gear is either free or discounted as if he made it with item creation feats.
...can use thrown or ranged weapons with exceptional skill, at ranges far beyond the listed ranges of these weapons. He uses the same stat to determine hit and damage bonuses for all his attacks, whether melee or ranged.
...can adopt defensive stances that make him resistant or immune to various attack forms.
...can cover great distances in a short period of time, perhaps by gaining a fast, durable mount as a class feature.
...can convert enemies to his cause through impassioned speeches, or bring back the dead with a curse and a thump on the chest, or travel the planes by slashing the fabric of reality with his sword. He can't necessarily do all of them at once, but with time and preparation and a modest investment of feats or skill ranks, he should be able to do most of them.
...can smash any barrier, even a range (perhaps with a thrown weapon).
...can function in extreme environments such as underwater, in space, and on hostile elemental planes, just by virtue of his extreme toughness.

[tempestman]

Tier 3. You need to be able to imitate the Wizard's key abilities

It's an improvement nonetheless. I'll probably start posting things here tomorrow after I get some rest. We can continue from there.

[Paulcynic]

Awesome :)

So the essence is that he needs to be invulnerable to Instant Death and Hostile Polymorph, must be able to kill anything that a caster summons out of hell and beyond, and must be able to see anything and everything, jump in place of flying, and.. and cast spells.

Unless we use Ziegander's awesome (Ex) conversions. Those are genius, Sir! Are we able to resurrect this thread and migrate the conversation there? Or would it be ok with you (Mr. Zeigander) if we cut interesting bits into this thread?

Note to self: Never write posts while listening to Two Steps from Hell.

lul, that made my night :)

When a scorpion roughly the size of human suffering uses an ability on him that reads "You die, and nothing can stop it. No save. You can't even block this with things that say you can block stuff that can't be blocked.", he just kind of laughs and then uses its corpse as a vessel to fly onward to the end of time and gut the absolute oblivion of all things in order to use its viscera as a beard warmer.

This too.

What you ask for isn't actually compatible with your limitations.

Please feel free to break the guidelines if it means a T1 martial class.

Edit: I don't know enough about the Pathfinder system to tell you what levels I think these should come into play at. By the way, you should specify you're talking about Pathfinder in the OP in order to help your responses.

Ah, good call :) In this case lets pretend its either or; I'll figure out its place in my homebrew even if its designed from a 3.5 perspective.


I think a great deal of this can be accomplished as Extraordinary and Supernatural powers or feats. Of course the effects would be similar/identical but we'd have to craft the flavor-text in such a way that we don't call it "magic" in the same way science fiction and fantasy achieve the same impossible feats, while remaining diametrically opposed concepts. Take instant movement, for example. In fantasy, you beseech your God or recite a chant that alters reality, poof you're now somewhere else. In sci-fi, you step onto a teleport pad, have your atoms segregated, collected and beamed to another location, reassembled perfectly (somehow) and you're ready to go.

Zeigander has done a ton of footwork on this, and is exactly along the lines of the OP :) Maybe we can look over his conversions and nudge them closer to making the Fighter T1? T2 is a great boost either way :)

[SamBurke]

Awesome :)

So the essence is that he needs to be invulnerable to Instant Death and Hostile Polymorph, must be able to kill anything that a caster summons out of hell and beyond, and must be able to see anything and everything, jump in place of flying, and.. and cast spells.

Unless we use Ziegander's awesome (Ex) conversions. Those are genius, Sir! Are we able to resurrect this thread and migrate the conversation there? Or would it be ok with you (Mr. Zeigander) if we cut interesting bits into this thread?

Yeah, pretty much. I LOVE Ziegander's solution, there... when you summon outsiders with DR40/-- as an (Ex) you are doing something so right.

lul, that made my night :)

/snip

Thanks! I go a little overboard when I get my songs on... and I certainly got dem on. I'm ready to go all night, if needed...

[Ziegander]

Or would it be ok with you (Mr. Zeigander) if we cut interesting bits into this thread?

I would be completely fine with migrating any amount of that stuff over here, no problem. There is however still a big gap between the stuff in that thread and the idea of making a Fighter Tier 1. I tried to institute a saving throw or other limitations/chance of failure to most of the strategies, even, or especially, when making equivalencies to Wizard spells that previously had no chance of failure or limitations.

Another thing that helps a Tier 1 become Tier 1 is the ability to dictate the course and pace of a campaign. A Wizard or Cleric can quite easily go wildly off the "beaten path" set in motion by the DM and do whatever they want and suffer little to no mechanical consequences for doing so.

So, the most important things any Tier 1 Fighter class will need (much, much more important than things like being able to hit stuff hard or being immune to death) are a) the ability to simply effect creatures/objects/environments with no chance of failure; and b) the ability to adventure on his terms not the DM's.

[Knight9910]

Hahaha. The funny part is when I first read this the first thing I thought was "so he wants a saiyan class?"

Alternately, isn't this basically what Book of Nine Swords is? An attempt at making fighters into a better tier class?

[Ashtagon]

Hmm... I'm going to say he'll look a lot like this guy:

Spoiler

Show

No, seriously. At the very least, the golden-age Superman. You're going to need ridiculously crazy physical mobility- maybe a class level squared bonus to jump, balance, tumble, climb, and so on. An equally enormous bonus to damage. The ability bypass all forms of damage reduction. Senses good enough to make cover and invisibility meaningless.

You ninjad me. I googled up the exact same piccie!

[Knaight]

Hahaha. The funny part is when I first read this the first thing I thought was "so he wants a saiyan class?"

Alternately, isn't this basically what Book of Nine Swords is? An attempt at making fighters into a better tier class?

Tome of Battle (which is what Book of Nine Swords is) has 3 classes, all tier 3. This thread is aiming for tier 1, which is significantly above that.

[Knight9910]

Fair enough. Book of Nine Swords classes are powerful, but they're not exactly Psionics Handbook levels of destroy-the-world power. Still, it seems something along the lines of Bo9S, only stronger is what you're looking for.

[gkathellar]

It doesn't look like anything, because it can't be done. A Tier 1 fighter has spells, at which point it's not a fighter: it's a spellcaster with good BAB and better hit points.

Tier 2 non-spellcasters are next to impossible to build, as a number of efforts on this forum have demonstrated. The only non-spellcasting Tier 1 homebrew I've ever seen was RoC's Protean, and that could transform into any monster and gain all its abilities.

Because in short, the definition for Tier 1 is: you can do almost anything, at almost any time, in ways that explicitly disrupt the mechanical aspects of the game. And that's not compatible with the definition of fighter: guy who is good at hurting things and at avoiding getting hurt by things.

If you want to build an Exalted Champion class or something, well that's not a fighter, that's an Exalted Champion. And you're going to have to come up with a hell of a lot of "Heroations" or whatever to even come close to the Tier 1 level of versatility. And you're going to have to make sure the class isn't so chock full of bonuses that it's totally nonfunctional before level 7.

[zegram 33]

it seems to me you could get close if you totally anime'd it up.
like, give it a crazy amounts of attacks per round, blade beam type ranged attacks, and massive skill bonuses, maybe some aoe save or die attacks as full round actions or something similarly uber.
as for non-combat or more unusual uses...
letting attacks slice through anything inanimate would help for playing around, and using that im sure you could come up with a couple of abilities.
giving it ton of skillpoints would help too

[Ziegander]

It doesn't look like anything, because it can't be done.

I'm starting to think it can be done, believe it or not. I think I'm going to try to design it...

The idea starts with borrowing some of the Artificer's tricks to divorce him from item dependency and allow him to access magic through (Ex) crafting. If I do that right, that'll get him most of the way there on its own. From there I'm not sure where I'll go, but 8 skill points per level and a way to deal level appropriate damage are likely.

[gkathellar]

it seems to me you could get close if you totally anime'd it up.

What does that even mean, high power levels? Have you read silver age comics? Or wuxia? Or Greek mythology?

like, give it a crazy amounts of attacks per round, blade beam type ranged attacks, and massive skill bonuses, maybe some aoe save or die attacks as full round actions or something similarly uber.

You mean like Tome of Battle does? Because none of what you're describing sounds T1. I'm not sure any of it even sounds especially T2.

letting attacks slice through anything inanimate would help for playing around, and using that im sure you could come up with a couple of abilities.

"Oh hey, I'm the fighter, I can cut things better now that I'm ... wait, I could always cut things! This doesn't help me with anything!"

giving it ton of skillpoints would help too

Skills? You mean those things that spellcasters make largely obsolete by 5th level?

EDIT:

The idea starts with borrowing some of the Artificer's tricks to divorce him from item dependency and allow him to access magic through (Ex) crafting. If I do that right, that'll get him most of the way there on its own. From there I'm not sure where I'll go, but 8 skill points per level and a way to deal level appropriate damage are likely.

More power to you for making the effort, and I hope you prove me wrong. But if it's getting most of its T1 chops from magic item crafting then you're mostly demonstrating that a variant Artificier is Tier 1.

[zegram 33]

sorry, guess i wasn clear, by "anime it up" i meant to give a basic idea of the sort of design it would end up as.
the reason im not looking at mythology is there arnt that many mythological characters you could call "fighters" that would have the kind of abilitis we're talking about here, unless you say "has bathed in the blood of a mystical dragon and is now immune to all forms of damage except for an oak leaf shaped patch on his body", whereas anime is full of people doing retarded stuff with weapons.
by crazy large amount of attacks i literally meant that, as in heading up towards 20 or 30 a round.
by cut through anything i meant, well...anime it up style, as in literally effortlessly slice through any door, wall, magic effect, or whatever, adding in part of the rogues functionality to open locked doors and chests.
as for the skillpoints, i will admit that was simply the best thing i could come up with to help with information gathering and such inside towns, since nothing in the concept of "fighter" really lends itself to that, that i can see.

[gkathellar]

by crazy large amount of attacks i literally meant that, as in heading up towards 20 or 30 a round.
by cut through anything i meant, well...anime it up style, as in literally effortlessly slice through any door, wall, magic effect, or whatever, adding in part of the rogues functionality to open locked doors and chests.

Yes, I heard you. Neither of those things are hugely impressive compared to the "I create universes" mindset of T1-2 characters.

I mean, literally, that's what Genesis does. It creates universes.

[Knaight]

Fair enough. Book of Nine Swords classes are powerful, but they're not exactly Psionics Handbook levels of destroy-the-world power. Still, it seems something along the lines of Bo9S, only stronger is what you're looking for.

Psionics Handbook is nothing compared to the Wizard, Cleric, and Druid. Complete Psionics gets up there, but only with the variant StP Erudite. Then there are the Archivist and Artificer, which were introduced in splatbooks that focused somewhat heavily on spell casting.

[zegram 33]

ok, fair enough
all im going off is he wizard spell list, rather than any first hand knowledge of what an optimized wizard/cleric can do with it

[Eldan]

Well.
Let's see what a mid-PO wizard can do, level by level, more or less in core:

Level 1:
-Improve his own or his allies' battle strength significantly (shield, mage armour, true strike, enlarge person)
-Create servants that help with tasks (Unseen servant, Mount, Summon Monster)
-Have various ways to deal with social and other similar non-combat situations (silent image, charm person, disguise self, comprehend languages)
-Significantly weaken one or several enemies to the point they can no longer function in combat (Grease, sleep, color spray, ray of enfeeblement)
-Has ways to deal with various environmental obstacles and challenges (Jump, feather fall, floating disk, endure elements)
-Can gain knowledge about situations and objects (Detect X, Identify)
-Gain secure locations for resting (Rope trick)

Level 2:
-Can become immune to entire categories of attacks (Protection from Arrow, blur, see invisibility, glitterdust)
-Can send information over long distances (Whispering Wind)
-Can outclass entire mundane skillsets (Knock, Invisibility)
-Can create permanent effects (Continual Flame)

Level 3:
-Change opponent's mind (Suggestion, Rage)

Level 4:
-Gain permanent servants (Animate Dead)
-Change objects into other objects (Polymorph, stone shape)

Level 5:
-Create any object from nothing (Major creation, Fabricate)
-Know the future (contact other plane)
-Teleportation

Level 6:
-Nothing *really* new here

Level 7:
-Move to other planes

Level 8:
-Prevent resurrection et al (Trap the Soul)

Level 9:
-Be basically immortal (Astral Projection)
-Stop time (Time Stop)
-create a new world (genesis)

Now the wizard can do all these things, without extreme cheese. he can also decide which of them he'd like to do that day. A tier 1 fighter should be on a similar level.