Returning the Fighter to relevance.

[javcs]

Yeah, ok. I agree with you. The problem is that by insisting on not nerfing anything, you're setting the bar very high for a character that isn't supposed to use magic. Which again, is fine, unless you want to change it into something else in order to reach that bar you just set.

There are plenty of ways to build gishes in 3rd edition. So if you want to go for it. You don't have to transform the native fighter 20 into a gish just because you think he should "compete" with overpowered casters.

I think you can make the high level fighter interesting and competitive without turning him into a wizard-lite.

There's a difference between "gish" and "competitive noncaster". Right now, the only viable high level, decent or higher op level primary combatant is a gish build or a pure caster who dabbles - noncasters are not competitive.

You won't be able to accomplish this. You just won't. Without arbitrarily giving the fighter abilities like "he swings his sword so fast he creates a wave of heat that hits everyone in a 60ft cone with super-heated air", you're not going to ever have a system where your precious strong casters do not exclude noncasters. They will always be able to outshine and outperform the rogue and fighter and barbarian and ranger. That's why people argue to give the fighter powers like chopping mountains in half. Because you have to turn him into a wizard in order to compete with the wizard. But for all that, just play a wizard with a sword.

This argument is part of the problem. You don't, or you shouldn't, need to be a wizard to be competitive with the wizard. You do however, need to be good enough in and out of combat that it's not effective or efficient for the casters to entirely replace you with another caster.

The world is harsher than you think. You actually need partners. An entire party even. Some of them will provide the magic that you speak of.

Oh, sure, the dedicated casters are going to be better at magic than you, but it is still in your own long-term self interest to have some degree of facility in recognizing and defending against hostile magics. Your basic warrior training regimen might not cover much, but it ought to cover ways to better defend yourself against hostile magics and bypass some magical defenses.
Saying that a high level character needs to be dependent upon another character (who is not necessarily dependent upon the first) is bad game design and bad worldbuilding. Because, really, if you need me to deal with absolutely everything, including basic protections for you, but I don't need you, why am I adventuring with you and giving you an equal share in the profit from said adventuring - because I'm providing the party more than you are. Why do I not track down another caster and adventure with them?

I appreciate that this is your opinion. But becoming supernatural should be a choice that the player makes, and not one that he should be forced to take on.

In the end, I suppose it really depends on what your threshold is for this kind of stuff. I can see an archer being able to bypass wind walls and similar effects with his bow shots, and being able to puncture a wall of force through skill and power alone. But cutting down every tree in a forest with an arrow shot or something like that should be an option for someone that wants to play a mythic fighter, but not necessary for the fighter to compete at higher levels.

The former could be fantastical (Ex) abilities, even though they're currently not possible without magic. Cutting down every tree in a forest with a single arrow shot? Yeah ... I'd agree that's probably not for a standard fighter, but a high level fighter who's focused on archery ought to be able to take down a single tree and hit the guy who was trying to hide behind it with a single arrow.
I'd say that there would probably be a menu of options, some of which would be (Ex) and others would be (Su). The baseline abilities and that every fighter gets should probably be purely or mostly (Ex), with most of the (Su) options being passive self-boosts. It's possible, perhaps even likely, that some of the (Su) options would facilitate play at higher op levels.

In addition, it's not exactly an opinion. It's a rational assessment of the world that the rules describe. When magic is better than no magic, having magic is better than not having magic. And, with a handful of exceptions magic is better than no magic.

[Cosi]

I don't want the fighter to have that type of power and I still think he can excel in high level play. Maybe you're not up to the challenge, but spare me your defeatist and unimaginative advice. If your method of fixing the fighter is "the wizard can fly, so the fighter should be able to jump miles into the sky" then we'll just disagree on what is suitable for a high level fighter.

Alright, let's see it. What is this high-level Fighter I can't imagine?

How many summon spells is your wizard preparing each day? I thought earlier in the thread we didn't want to assume anyone had the perfect spell necessary to overcome a challenge. How many slots is the wizard devoting to trapfinding?

One, using Elemental Summoning. Seven yesterday, using planar binding.

What are you talking about? It looked like a lot of gather information, stealth, handle animal, maybe spot and listen, diplomacy. I think I'd probably hire a caster for Speak with Dead and Plane Shift. But other than that, what are you looking for? If not skills, what class features are going to solve those problems?

So your ability is "has money"? Congratulations, you're a Commoner and belong at 1st level. Part of being high level is getting to do things on your own. Anyone can pay someone for spells. It takes someone seriously hardcore to cast them himself.

Looking at the High Level Challenges I listed:

1. Infiltrate the Dream Ziggurat and steal Morpheus's sceptre.

This would require some method of access, presumably plane shift or dream magic, though likely with some kind of additional restriction about location or ritual resources. Once in, you would need to avoid high level divinations and traps, locating a vault that is likely concealed by some kind of illusion.

2. Discover the crafting techniques of an extinct desert tribe.

The intended assumption was that no particular records of this tribe remained. As such, mundane skills would prove insufficient, and some combination of speak with dead, commune, hindsight, or legend lore. Perhaps a better challenge would be to produce a particular item, potentially allowing the use of fabricate for blind creation of the relevant item.

3. Find the fragments of lich's phylactery.

Presumably trapped, warded against scrying, and on several planes. There would presumably be the third option of figuring out how to defeat the Lich without destroying the phylactery.

4. Destroy an artifact.

Per DMG, this would likely require planar travel, plus knowledge of the particular method of destroying the artifact.

5. Perform or disrupt a cataclysmic ritual.

The "disrupt" here is potentially simple, though it is likely a combat encounter with a high level caster who is well prepared - something that is intensely non-trivial. Performing a ritual would likely require gathering knowledge, acquiring components, and finally traveling to a ritual site.

[Arbane]

No, no. You are mistaken. I am keeping in place restrictions on the fighter that the game designers put in place; he is not magical or supernatural.

Except, y'know, for their bling. It's Okay for them to WEAR magic, just not to HAVE magic.
(And it's a dumb restriction in a game where PERFECTLY NONMAGICAL centipedes can be 40 feet long.)

I get it. You haven't seen a powerful fighter, so you can't imagine one in your head that doesn't look like some stupid demigod out of myth that you are confusing as a "fighter". That's fine man, you can't see it. Ok.

As a general rule, godlike opponents in mythology tend to be fought by actual gods. Meanwhile, D&D has the conceit that killing enough goblins will eventually make heroes able to go toe-to-tentacle with Cthulhu. (Or at least most of the population of Hell.)

What class would you use for Achilles (invulnerable), Sigurd(could talk to birds, invulnerable, prophecies), Beowulf (wrestled trolls to death, could hold his breath all day), Sir Kay of the Round Table (could radiate supernatural heat from his hands), Sir Gawaine also of the Round Table (solar powered)?

I won't even bother with guys like Heracles or Gilgamesh, since they actually ARE demigods. (Not that big a deal in Greek myth, given Zeus' inability to keep it in his toga.) Or Cu Chullainn, since he was OBVIOUSLY a Barbarian.

As was said, what kind of abilities DO you think high-level Fighters should be permitted to have? (Please don't say "hit stuff EVEN HARDER". Lack of Big Numbers isn't really their problem.)

[Zale]

Actually this is a great question.



Everyone try designing 2 feats for the 15+ range. Remember Fighters would be getting 1 feat per level so it should be a level's worth of class features. Go!

Probably something along the lines of:

While wielding a bow or crossbow with which you are proficient, you make do either of the following as a full-round action:

Fire an arrow at your full base attack bonus at a number of different creatures up to your base attack bonus.

or

Fire an arrow at your full base attack bonus that does double damage and bypasses an amount of damage reduction equal to your base attack bonus.

~~~

Failing that, a few epic feats might make the cut as level 6-10th fighter feats.

Yes, both of those were agreed upon a few pages back.

I apologize! I missed that.

[Morphic tide]

Everyone try designing 2 feats for the 15+ range. Remember Fighters would be getting 1 feat per level so it should be a level's worth of class features. Go!

You do realize that very few classes get a thing every level, right? Spellcasting is so powerful because it's a combinatorial thing. It's easy to write up a spell. It's considerably harder to make anything else. Seriously, using only core, how much broken stuff do casters have? Most of the power of casters come from the fact that so many splats focus on casting. And why wouldn't they? The core rulebook opinion of non-casters is quite decidedly not positive. We are here specifically to ignore all that to make it work. But, for those who want to make feats: 15th level is when 8th level spells come online. So, make feats about as strong as an 8th level spell, if not stronger, probably continuous passives or better scaling or less limited in use, preferably basing them on buffs. Oh, and do use chains of feats leading up to it.

For example, start with a scaling version of Toughness that gives you health based on hit dice size and level. Then make a higher level feat with the scaling Toughness as a prerequisite that gives, let's say, Fast Healing that is based on something you can expect to increase, like Constitution score or Fortitude save. Then, you can have Regeneration.

Another example: Start with a Fortitude or Constitution increasing feat that scales on its own. Then have a Natural Armor AC provider keyed off what the previous feat increased for scaling. Then get DR based on either the first thing or your Natural Armor AC.

Fighter feats should be in trees and chains. But they should not be filled with taxes that just increase what a previous feat did. They should scale off of the last feat in the chain, or the first feat, building up more and more.

A third example: Start with a basic feat for Intelligence to to-hit. Then, you can have the next in the chain be Deflection AC based on your to-hit. Next, spell deflection or negation, not SR, based on your Deflection AC or Intelligence.

Look at that: I made the outline of three feat chains that all involve stuff you want to scale upwards as long as you can.

[Novolin]

Monk has a feature every level

[Lans]

Again, the question was not about how the Fighter could do it. It was what ways the restrictive posters imagined them doing it in their paradigms.

Although I would mention that since some DM do not include a magic mart, it makes good design sense to include native ways for classes that need certain items to obtain those items in the absence of a magic mart.

Doesn't the base rules assume you can find items of certain value based on population most of the time?

[Zale]

You do realize that very few classes get a thing every level, right? Spellcasting is so powerful because it's a combinatorial thing. It's easy to write up a spell. It's considerably harder to make anything else. Seriously, using only core, how much broken stuff do casters have? Most of the power of casters come from the fact that so many splats focus on casting.

Classically good core wizard spells:
Shapechange, Astral Projection, the entire Planar Binding line, Time Stop, Celerity.

And why wouldn't they? The core rulebook opinion of non-casters is quite decidedly not positive. We are here specifically to ignore all that to make it work. But, for those who want to make feats: 15th level is when 8th level spells come online. So, make feats about as strong as an 8th level spell, if not stronger, probably continuous passives or better scaling or less limited in use, preferably basing them on buffs. Oh, and do use chains of feats leading up to it.

I apologize, but from your tone I can't tell if you want better fighter greats or not. If you don't, would you mind telling me what you anticipate will replace them?

For example, start with a scaling version of Toughness that gives you health based on hit dice size and level. Then make a higher level feat with the scaling Toughness as a prerequisite that gives, let's say, Fast Healing that is based on something you can expect to increase, like Constitution score or Fortitude save. Then, you can have Regeneration.

Another example: Start with a Fortitude or Constitution increasing feat that scales on its own. Then have a Natural Armor AC provider keyed off what the previous feat increased for scaling. Then get DR based on either the first thing or your Natural Armor AC.

Fighter feats should be in trees and chains. But they should not be filled with taxes that just increase what a previous feat did. They should scale off of the last feat in the chain, or the first feat, building up more and more.

I think that's a pretty good design metric. One of the key problems with feats is that they don't do enough; they good ones are hurried behind piles of forgettable crap.

Unless, of course, these feats are gated behind required fighter levels like weapon spec. and crew, then there's nothing stopping other people from using them as well.

Which doesn't encourage fighters to actually take more levels than they need to polish off their build.

[Arbane]

Shrug It Off
Requirement: Base Fortitude save +5 or better, Fighter level 8
When the character is affected by various status effects, they only suffer a lesser effect.
Nauseated becomes Sickened.
Stunned becomes Dazed.
Exhausted becomes Fatigued.
Frightened or Panicked become Shaken.
Paralyzed or Petrified become Staggered.
Duration remains the same, except for 'permanent' or 'instantaneous' durations, which last one minute.

Fairy Trods
You know the secret paths between worlds.
Requirement: 5 ranks in Knowledge: Nature or Knowledge: The Planes, Fighter level 10
On a Knowledge roll of (DC table goes here), you know a route to travel between planes.
For each 5 points over the DC you make the roll by, pick one of the following:
The path is reachable within a day's travel from your current location.
The path won't take more than a few days to reach its destination.
The path isn't hideously dangerous by your standards.
The path is by land or sea, your choice.
The path isn't guarded.
(Obviously, the problem with this one is that it requires a FIGHTER to have SKILLS.)

Predatory Rush
You're much faster when charging into battle.
Requirement: Fighter or Barbarian level 6
When charging at an enemy to attack, you have double your normal movement rate.
At level 10, when charging at an enemy to attack, you have quadruple your normal movement rate.
At level 15, when charging at an enemy to attack, you have ten times your normal movement rate.
You can use jump as a movement for this.

Unbreakable Will
When affected by an unwanted mind-affecting spell or effect, you get a new Will save to shake it off every minute.
At level 10, you can make a new save to shake it off every round.
The character is explicitly immune to any orders or suggestions to NOT make the save if the player wants to.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Classically good core wizard spells:
Shapechange, Astral Projection, the entire Planar Binding line, Time Stop, Celerity.

Celerity isn't Core.

Alter self, polymorph, polymorph any object, the entire planar binding line, plane shift, (greater) teleport, the entire silent/minor/major image line, shadow conjuration/evocation/shades, glitterdust, grease, miracle, and many, many, many more are, however.

[Milo v3]

Everyone try designing 2 feats for the 15+ range. Remember Fighters would be getting 1 feat per level so it should be a level's worth of class features. Go!

Canyon Cutter (Combat)
Prerequisite: 15 fighter levels, weapon focus
Benefit: Once per minute you can activate this feat with either a standard or full-round action, making an attack against an unattended object with a weapon you have weapon focus with. The target is completely annihilated destroying as much as a 10-foot cube of nonliving matter if a standard action is used, or a 10-foot cube worth of non-living matter per 5 levels in the fighter class you possess if a full-action is used to activate this feat. This feat destroys only part of any very large object or structure targeted. The ray affects even objects constructed entirely of force, such as forceful hand or a wall of force, but not magical effects such as a globe of invulnerability or an antimagic field.

No Rest for the Wicked (Combat)
Prerequisite: 15 Fighter levels, intimidate 10
Benefit: Whenever the fighter successfully performs a coupe de grace or kills a living creature with a critical hit, he can make an intimidate check opposed by the killed creature's will save. If this is successful the fighter claims the victim's soul. A fighter cannot have more souls claimed at a single time than Souls claimed in such a way cannot be resurrected unless the soul is released as a free action. As a standard action, the fighter can force one of their claimed souls into a corpse creating a ghoul, skeleton, or zombie that is permanently under their control. A fighter can only control 4 HD worth of undead creatures per fighter level with this feat.

[Morphic tide]

Canyon Cutter (Combat)
Prerequisite: 15 fighter levels, weapon focus
Benefit: Once per minute you can activate this feat with either a standard or full-round action, making an attack against an unattended object with a weapon you have weapon focus with. The target is completely annihilated destroying as much as a 10-foot cube of nonliving matter if a standard action is used, or a 10-foot cube worth of non-living matter per 5 levels in the fighter class you possess if a full-action is used to activate this feat. This feat destroys only part of any very large object or structure targeted. The ray affects even objects constructed entirely of force, such as forceful hand or a wall of force, but not magical effects such as a globe of invulnerability or an antimagic field.

No Rest for the Wicked (Combat)
Prerequisite: 15 Fighter levels, intimidate 10
Benefit: Whenever the fighter successfully performs a coupe de grace or kills a living creature with a critical hit, he can make an intimidate check opposed by the killed creature's will save. If this is successful the fighter claims the victim's soul. A fighter cannot have more souls claimed at a single time than Souls claimed in such a way cannot be resurrected unless the soul is released as a free action. As a standard action, the fighter can force one of their claimed souls into a corpse creating a ghoul, skeleton, or zombie that is permanently under their control. A fighter can only control 4 HD worth of undead creatures per fighter level with this feat.

No Rest For The Wicked is an amazing effect that is in line with what a high level Intimidate skill should be able to pull. Some ghosts are a matter of grudges. Others are from someone scaring the piss out of the person they just killed.

[javcs]

Everyone try designing 2 feats for the 15+ range. Remember Fighters would be getting 1 feat per level so it should be a level's worth of class features. Go!

Here's one:
Massive Swing
Prerequisites: BAB +15, Great Swing(requires Cleave and BAB +7), Mighty Swing(requires Great Swing and BAB +9)
Bonus: Each attack you make applies to all creatures within your reach that you threaten. If you use a special attack such as Disarm, Trip, or Sunder, it applies only to the first creature attacked. You may choose to refrain from applying Massive Swing to creatures, thus you need not attack allies. If you drop one of your foes with a Massive Swing, you may make a cleave attack normally, however you may only make one cleave attack per massive swing made, even if a massive swing drops more than one foe (note that the cleave attack can also be a Massive Swing).

This is swiped from the Warhulk (Miniatures Handbook). I'm assuming swiping and converting most of the Warhulk's other class features into two feat chains or auto-scaling feats - Great Swing, Might Swing, Massive Swing for melee, and adapting Mighty Rock Throwing, Sweeping Boulder, and Massive Sweeping Boulder to work for regular ranged weapon attacks (thrown or otherwise).



The ability to not make iterative attacks during your turn, and then spend those "saved" attacks to either make additional AoOs and/or to attempt to parry an attack with an opposed attack roll (if you're using a shield to parry, you add the full shield bonus (including enhancement bonuses) to the attack roll). Provides a bonus to both TWF and Sword&Board.
Maybe grant that as a general combat option, and give fighters the ability to get bonuses or extras with it.


Also, new baseline class feature for the Fighter, probably at level 1:
Born to War: You may add your highest physical ability score modifier to your BAB and to your other ability scores for the purpose of meeting feat prerequisites.
Possibly at later levels or with a feat upgrade that to gain a bonus to your other ability scores equal to your highest physical ability score.
Possibly also grant Fighters the ability to ignore some or all non-feat prerequisites for Fighter bonus feats that are taken as Fighter bonus feats (still need the prereqs if you take them with your feats from levels/HD).



In a similar sort of vein as the Trophies concept - something that lets the Fighter steal attributes from those he personally kills.
Something along of:
Claim Essence
This potent ritual physically binds the essence of another to the Claimant. The victim is ripped out of existence, and the best parts are patched into the Claimant's body and soul. In game terms, when the ritual is completed, the victim is destroyed beyond recovery. The Claimant gains any special qualities, special attacks, feats, or skill points he wishes that are possessed by the victim. He also gains the victim's spell slots or power points. He may also take the victim's ability scores if they are higher than his own.
However, if the Claimant is too greedy and takes too much of the victim, then something of the victim's personality can endure. Total the amount of ability score points, skill points, abilities, and feats taken by the Claimant and divide this total by five to get the personality remnant's effective Will Save. Each day, the Claimant must make an opposed Will Save against the personality remnant. If the remnant wins, it takes control of the Claimant's body that day. A character can contain multiple personality remnants; they can work together or oppose each other, depending upon their beliefs and outlooks.
Special: This cannot be used on mindless constructs or mindless undead.
This is a rough adaptation of Binding V from Infernum d20, and where it has prereqs of Sorcery 18 ranks, and Binding I, II, III, and IV. It takes 3 hours, and has a Sorcery DC (Wis) of 15+level of target, and can be used to kill people. Binding I is basically a persistent Command that allows a new save every round, Binding II doesn't really have a direct analogue, Binding III sticks the target into a flask (ala an Iron Flask or a genie lamp), and Binding IV lets you force the victim to inhabit the form of a chosen weapon (making a magic weapon) or creature (creating a possessed host).
For D&D, perhaps require that you personally kill the victim, or land the last wounding blow on them before they bled out, and maybe also let anyone take it, not just martials. Murdering and stealing other people's powers is something somewhat common amongst evil spellcasters, and this would be a decent way to allow them to do so. And, of course, this would probably compromise an evil act, or at least, a not-good act depending on the victim.

Adapting to the Trophies concept, might require the Claimant to take and keep a trophy from each victim as a focus.

Also in a similar, if more limited - crack open Quintessential Drow for Gravebonds and their abilities.

[Milo v3]

Road to Nowhere (Combat)
Prerequisite: 15 Fighter levels, knowledge (geography) 5.
Benefit: When the fighter travels they can find themselves reaching their destinations faster than they realistically should. During overland travel with a group who number is less than or equal to his fighter level, the group’s overland speed increases to 30 miles per hour.
Special: If the fighter has 5 ranks in knowledge (planes), the fighter can end up slowly reaching the border of a plane which borders the shadow. Travelling to another plane in this way requires 2d8 hours of travel.

Craft Brutal Item (Combat, Crafting)
Prerequisite: 10 Fighter levels
Benefit: This acts as the craft magic arms and armour feat or craft wondrous item, except it substitutes his fighter levels for a caster level and the item created must incorporate body parts taken from a creature he has killed.
Special: This feat can be taken up to two times.

Astral Immortality (Combat, Story)
Prerequisite: 5 Fighter levels, cha 13
Benefit: The astral plane has acknowledged the fighters prowess, and he is able to draw upon his own reputation for strength through his silver cord. The fighter calculates how much negative hit points he can take before death equal to the sum of his constitution and charisma scores.
Goal: Gain 11 levels in the fighter class and be either famous or infamous.
Completion Benefit: When the fighter dies, his soul is pulled back to his astral reflection by his silver cord. After 3d12 days, his legend's astral manifestation becomes solid enough to return to life. The fighter is resurrected in a random location on the astral plane, with hit points equal to his charisma score, two permanent negative levels, and astral projections of the equipment he had with him when he died. Astrally projected equipment becomes real if it ever exists on the same plane as the real equipment it is a copy of, and the "real" equipment disappears. Each time this ability is used, add an additional 3d12 days to the amount of time before the fighter is resurrected in this manner. These increases disappear if the fighter is ever resurrected through magical effects (such as raise dead).

[Vaz]

Perfect Sentinel [Combat Form]; Requires Fighter Level 15, Blind Fight, Combat Focus
- You can never be surprised or caught flat footed, and you are always considered to roll a 20 when rolling for Initiative, You are immune to both magical and non-magical sleep, no longer needing to do so, and are immune to Mind Affecting effects. While within Combat Focus, you may add your Base Attack Bonus as an untyped bonus to any Concentration, Decipher Script, Gather Information, Listen, Sense Motive or Spot checks the bearer makes. In addition, your combat focus begins as soon as the fighter rolls initiative, and now lasts for hours, rather than rounds, and is increased by a further hour (instead of the usual round) for each combat form the bearer has (for a minimum of 12 hours, +1 hour for each additional combat form feat except this and Combat Focus).

Guardian of the Gods; Requires Fighter Level 18, Perfect Sentinel
While within your Combat Focus (and until the end of any turn in which your Focus ends), any bonuses received from a Combat Form feat other than this or Combat Focus is doubled for each additional combat form feat the bearer has other than this one.

Essentially, on a 20th level fighter, they get Immunity to Surprise, Flat Footedness, Roll 20 for Initiative, Immune to Sleep and Mind Affecting, with a +20 to any meaningful check that they might expect to use while on duty. With the 6 Combat Form feats available, granting +6 to vs-Dodge-target AC, +40 vs Resist Bull Rush, Disarm, Grapple, Overrun, Trip, and Fast Healing 20. Now, of course, that includes 8 Combat Focus feats taken before, so I don't expect people to be taking that much as it would hurt other abilities. The other stuff might seem pretty powerful, but a; it's a fighter, and b; a lot of that stuff would need to come online a lot earler; Level 3 for Sleep and level 7-9 for Mind Blank.

[Keltest]

Warrior of Legend
Prerequisites: Fighter 15, cha 13, 10 ranks in intimidate, bluff or diplomacy

Effect: Your deeds have passed into legend. You may add your fighter level to any intimidate, bluff of diplomacy check.

And the followup

Strength of Legends
Prerequisites: Fighter 20, Cha 15, Warrior of Legend

Effect: Your legendary deeds are known in every household across the land. Though you are not a true god, you can draw upon the faith in your legend to briefly gain power. Once a day, you can imbue yourself with power, doubling your attacks per round, gaining 100 temporary hit points, boosting your armor class by 5, and allowing you to act while in negative hit points, so long as you still live. This effect lasts for four rounds.

Additionally, every time you or a companion slays a creature, you heal for its hit dice multiplied by your constitution modifier (if positive).

Actually, now that I think about it, I kind of like the idea of the fighter being fueled not by traditional magic, but by his own ego and legend. he becomes powerful because people believe he is powerful and heroic.

[Milo v3]

Actually, now that I think about it, I kind of like the idea of the fighter being fueled not by traditional magic, but by his own ego and legend. he becomes powerful because people believe he is powerful and heroic.

In Pathfinder that sort of thing even has precedence with characters with legends so large that when they died, they come back from the dead and gain supernatural power from the stories that may be told of them. That sort of thing is very much the style of thing that becomes reasonable once Paizo added Psychic Magic in it.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

In Pathfinder that sort of thing even has precedence with characters with legends so large that when they died, they come back from the dead and gain supernatural power from the stories that may be told of them. That sort of thing is very much the style of thing that becomes reasonable once Paizo added Psychic Magic in it.

The major drawback being "psychic magic."

Damnit, Paizo, nobody wants your stupid Vancian psionics.

[Milo v3]

The major drawback being "psychic magic."

Damnit, Paizo, nobody wants your stupid Vancian psionics.

1) Many people want it, because many of the psychic classes are flavourful without having balance issues.
2) It's completely unrelated to psionics.

[digiman619]

1) Many people want it, because many of the psychic classes are flavourful without having balance issues.
2) It's completely unrelated to psionics.

1) I'd argue that DSP's classes are widely considered to be more balanced than Paizo's.
2) It's clearly trying to get part of that aesthetic, otherwise they would have called it "emotional magic" or something. Heck, "mental magic" would have been cutting it close, but "psychic" is very clearly part of the psionic aesthetic, as show by the classic psionic class the psychic warrior.

[Milo v3]

1) I'd argue that DSP's classes are widely considered to be more balanced than Paizo's.
2) It's clearly trying to get part of that aesthetic, otherwise they would have called it "emotional magic" or something. Heck, "mental magic" would have been cutting it close, but "psychic" is very clearly part of the psionic aesthetic, as show by the classic psionic class the psychic warrior.

1) I never suggested psychic magic was more balanced than DSP classes, so that's a weird thing to say. And it doesn't change the fact that the psychic classes are flavourful and generally pretty balanced (even kineticist is pretty balanced despite how much hate gets thrown towards it, it just intentionally sucks at optimising it past it's floor).
2) It's psychic as in "The people who actually claim to be psychic in real life" rather than "psychic from sci-fi fiction". They don't really have any overlap outside of mindblade magus and three or four spells being based on powers. DSP even talks about how they cover completely different concepts thematically in their books, talking about how psychic magic is tapping into external power (like how the mesmerist gets his powers by tapping into the astral plane while kineticist it tied to the ethereal) while psionics is tapping into an internal power. Psychic magic is much closer to Akashic magic when it comes to it's aesthetics if you ask me.

[DMVerdandi]

Lol, decided to post back here because it's an interesting and funny thread. Read through all the posts, and ok...

The fighter needs a least common denominator when it comes to theme
At level 20, what should the fighter be like? At it's lowest, yet most effective level of use, what does that look like?
To me, I think of one of those cool underneath pressure types, that is just standing in front of some behemoth, and it just surgically starts to rip pieces of it apart. Every strike clean, no wasted effort, and an effortless fusion of technique and physical prowess. In combat I mean.

Personally, I am in the camp that says no to "rule of cool" class abilities. No slicing mountains in half. Do you know how much that would take? Theoretically speaking, 9th level spells don't come close to that amount of damage, so any damage that a supposedly non-magical fellow has, shouldn't be better just because. No cutting time and space. Not for no reason. It's campy. It's really really campy. A building, perhaps, but I don't think people are realizing the scale of a mountain, and the relative scale of even the craziest stuff in DND as of right now.

BUT, should a master of melee combat be able to ignore hardness at their greatest level? Totally.
I already posted a quick fix on the first page. It's still relatively non-flavored just like the fighter is, but it does have TOB mechanics added. Personally, I think in itself it is succinct and no one would ever need more than that, but for some reason, we like to re-invent the wheel here.

There exists a fighter parallel for every subsystem of source (as 4e would put it)
Ranger/Paladin are the divine fighters
Psychic Warrior is the psionic fighter
Incarnum...ehhh, but all of them are pretty physical.
And as for the arcane fighter, there is the duskblade(and hex blade...eww)
Warblade is really the fighter in it's best form though.

Hate it or love it, TOB is the most efficient route to having a mechanic that makes sense. The problem with feats as class features is that honestly, there is no standard. What is the requirement for a wizard to get Stone skin, a level 4 abjuration spell? 14 INT and level 7. EASY. However, what is the requirement for a wizard to get animate dead, a level 4 NECROMANCY spell???!!! Same requirements.

Feats on the other hand if they have requirements (Which most do), have a wild array of different requirements. Fighter feats in particular also have the plethora of weaknesses and holes in them that make them all terrible choices.

The Martial adept system however, took a page out of spellcasting's book, and cleaned up the whole process.
Are maneuvers like spells? No. In the same way Invocations aren't like spells. Are they that One use action type of thing? Yes. Yes they are. Most are what one would call rider effects. You want to attack? Cool. You want to attack for x3 damage this one round? Cool. Can you do it over and over and over, not necessarily. There is a cool down period, just like in real life. Do you want to throw the same punch over and over in a boxing match? God no. You'd get countered and blown away. Furthermore, it's hard doing it from the same position, you have to pull back, reset, and then go again if you want.

Personally, I think the 1-9 organization is perfect, and partially why spell casters are so popular to play.
Spellcasters are popular not because they can break the rules, but because they have all the rules to play by.

Fighters generally are like someone who can only press one row of keys on a keyboard. Writing a magnum opus like that is... monstrously difficult. T1's are like a supercomputer in comparison.

Even though TOB ain't close to tier 1, at least they get all the keys on the board.

How do we fix it?
The maneuver system. If it's too WEABOO FOR YOU(), simply keep the format, change the schools, maneuvers in them, and keep rolling. Paizo did exactly that. And path of war is probably qualitatively better than TOB.

Someone was mentioning exalted in the thread. Good. Why? Charms.Specifically, charms for non-combat skills. But instead of having that whole linear tree thing go on, just have independent maneuvers as before.


Lets say your fighter has swim right? Have a praxis(school) developed purely for nautical warfare. A level 1 maneuver could be based on wrestling in the water, and you get a +1/5 levels to grapple and damage in a grapple, but only in the water.
Don't have any fancy names for the school/praxis. Just call it nautical warfare, and voila, you have a maneuver right there. That maneuver could be called Octopus hold.

Schools to make off the top of the head? (Heavy Blades, light blades, Archery, Polearms, Stealth, Hand to Hand, Thrown, Guerrilla, Panzer(Armored), Acrobatics,Naval, )

You got 11 schools right there. Two strikes, two boosts, and one stance per level get you 45 maneuvers per school. 11 times 45 is 495. So, ground up, making a brand new maneuver user is 500 maneuvers. Theoretically if you do 10 a day, you could write it in a month and a half.


Or, not.



Secondarily, Another Idea I had was this. Take rogue, Now take fighter, Gestalt them. Now take Barbarian. Give barbarian ferocity instead of rage, Gestalt him into the fighter.
And that's really how you make a FIGHTER (non-tob). Barbarian and rogue are not important enough roles to differentiate them from a fighter really.

A barbarian is just a fighter that is hyped up on adrenaline yes, or theoretically one with the rage mechanic, and he takes toughness as every feat.
A rogue is just a sneaky fighter with no armor proficiency and bad weapons, and such, but where is all this acrobatic stuff coming from. Unnecessary to take them away from fighters, as it is the fighter who is supposed to be different than that paladin (I.E Knight), because they don't mind using all the tricks in the book supposedly.



So yeah. Fighter needs a niche, BUT the problem really is rogue and barbarian existing, and starting to pull in on that niche. Eliminate them as classes.
Really, I am for elimination of most, if not all base classes, and having warrior and adept as the two main starting classes, then everything else being advanced classes, but that's another story for another time.

[javcs]

Whoa, now.

I can easily see Barbarian being a variant or ACF package of Fighter. It's arguably not too hard to make the case for Paladin, Ranger, Psychic Warrior, Duskblade, Hexblade, etc being the same.

Rogue, though, Rogue is distinct enough that it should remain its own, distinct class. The Rogue has a distinct enough play style and approach to problems from the Fighter that while both are noncasters, both can be called "martials", the Rogue doesn't make sense as a Fighter derivative. There are places where there's enough in the way of overlap or commonality to make reusing certain class features or option lists a reasonable approach, however.



If one is going to trim everything down into variants on a handful of base classes, I'd argue that the Unearthed Arcana generic classes would be the place to start - Warrior (not the NPC class), Expert (not the NPC class), and Spellcaster. Obviously, the two noncaster baseline classes would need to be improved, and the list of abilities expanded, but I think that there's something to work with there. Admittedly, such an approach would hardly be a quick or easy solution, and would likely be better suited to a ground-up major rebuild, rather than applying a patch or fix.

[Arbane]

Personally, I am in the camp that says no to "rule of cool" class abilities. No slicing mountains in half. Do you know how much that would take?

According to the Song of Roland, one good whack with the magic sword Durandal. And Roland was trying to break the sword at the time!

Feargus MacRoy cut the tops off of three mountains, because he didn't want to hit Cu Chulain in a big battle.

Not only can D&D Fighters not keep up with Wizards, they can't even keep up with warriors from actual legends.

[Mordaedil]

I think the problem is only a problem because we analyze the fighter in isolation. Mechnically, they are a dip class, a class you go into to make your other classes better at what they should be doing. Multiclassing is one of the most fun things in 3rd edition D&D and I don't think loading the fighter class with more things will fix it. If anything it just makes the problem more obvious and we might as well just go back to the older versions of D&D like future versions of D&D has, where you are effectively locked into the class.

I don't really find that particularly satisfying though. I think it's better to think of the fighter in terms of the possible multiclasses you can get from it, like the thug (fighter/rogue) the face-wrecker (fighter/barbarian) and so on. It's better to advice people to not pick fighter as their main focus, because they will have a bad time. It is more productive then to suggest other angles that can give them a satisfying experience of playing what they want to be.

[Milo v3]

I think the problem is only a problem because we analyze the fighter in isolation. Mechnically, they are a dip class, a class you go into to make your other classes better at what they should be doing. Multiclassing is one of the most fun things in 3rd edition D&D and I don't think loading the fighter class with more things will fix it. If anything it just makes the problem more obvious and we might as well just go back to the older versions of D&D like future versions of D&D has, where you are effectively locked into the class.

I don't really find that particularly satisfying though. I think it's better to think of the fighter in terms of the possible multiclasses you can get from it, like the thug (fighter/rogue) the face-wrecker (fighter/barbarian) and so on. It's better to advice people to not pick fighter as their main focus, because they will have a bad time. It is more productive then to suggest other angles that can give them a satisfying experience of playing what they want to be.

It should be said that multiclassing isn't a rather attractive option when it comes to things like Pathfinder because of it's incentives to remain in your class and archetypes reducing the necessity to ever multiclass, and it wasn't exactly meant to be an attractive option in 3.5e considering the multiclassing penalties that it possessed.

The maneuver system. If it's too WEABOO FOR YOU(), simply keep the format, change the schools, maneuvers in them, and keep rolling. Paizo did exactly that. And path of war is probably qualitatively better than TOB.

Paizo did not do that at all. It was Dreamscarred Press who made Path of War, Paizo has maintained from the start that they are never going to touch maneuvers.

[Morphic tide]

Well, if you want to make Fighter good at multiclassing support, then it needs a few things to make any given way of fighting work significantly better. Might I suggest a damage dice progression like Monk, but slower, yet applicable to a broad range of weapons? Like the PF Brawler has? Making all weapons of a category have some specific damage dice is a rather strong thing, especially when you are talking about extremely low damage by default. Alternatively, it might be extra damage.

[Doctor Despair]

What impact would it have to allow fighters to take any feat with their bonus feats, not just fighter feats, but to add a prerequisite as a class feature that the character not have any levels in a class that grants 9ths (or full casting)? And if a bonus feat was granted at every level, with an additional free weapon proficiency? What if every four levels a fighter could "copy" any other classes (ex) ability, substituting fighter levels wherever the orignal class's levels are used in calculation? Would that grant the "blank slate" variability you're looking for?

Edit: And 6+Int skills because fighters deserve skill points, too

[Cosi]

Did Samurai ever show us his totally sweet high level Fighter that was going to blow all our minds?

Personally, I am in the camp that says no to "rule of cool" class abilities. No slicing mountains in half. Do you know how much that would take? Theoretically speaking, 9th level spells don't come close to that amount of damage, so any damage that a supposedly non-magical fellow has, shouldn't be better just because. No cutting time and space. Not for no reason. It's campy. It's really really campy. A building, perhaps, but I don't think people are realizing the scale of a mountain, and the relative scale of even the craziest stuff in DND as of right now.

High level D&D magic is weird. It scales a great deal in some ways, but very little in others. A 5th level spell can travel across the world, raise the dead, or visit another plane. But a blasting spell that kills a thousand non-name 1st level NPCs is epic level. It's true that there aren't spells that destroy armies or alter landscapes, there's no real reason there shouldn't be spells like that. Similarly, high level Fighters should totally get to smash mountains (or similar feats of strength).

I think the problem is only a problem because we analyze the fighter in isolation. Mechnically, they are a dip class, a class you go into to make your other classes better at what they should be doing.

You are misunderstanding why Fighter dips show up in builds. Characters don't dip Fighter because Fighter is a good dip. They dip it because their other classes (like Barbarian) stopped giving abilities at 1st level. If things worked the way you suggest, casters would dip Fighter.

Multiclassing is one of the most fun things in 3rd edition D&D and I don't think loading the fighter class with more things will fix it. If anything it just makes the problem more obvious and we might as well just go back to the older versions of D&D like future versions of D&D has, where you are effectively locked into the class.

Multiclassing is also the most broken part of 3e. It imposes variable costs for fixed benefits. I think the game would be much better off if we figured out what people like about open multiclassing, and tried to give them that without allowing people to play Wizard 3/Rogue 2/Ranger 1/Fighter 3/Thayan Knight 2s.

I don't really find that particularly satisfying though. I think it's better to think of the fighter in terms of the possible multiclasses you can get from it, like the thug (fighter/rogue) the face-wrecker (fighter/barbarian) and so on. It's better to advice people to not pick fighter as their main focus, because they will have a bad time. It is more productive then to suggest other angles that can give them a satisfying experience of playing what they want to be.

If Fighter is not supposed to be a class in the way that Rogue or Wizard is, it should not be presented as one. Instead, make "Fighter" a subclass or archetype or something.

[Arbane]

Did Samurai ever show us his totally sweet high level Fighter that was going to blow all our minds?

I hope he does. We can see how it'll do against that uber-sorcerer guy someone kept posting!