Berenzen's page

Berenzen wrote:

EldonG wrote:

People keep posting very specific builds of paladins that fight longer (because they heal themselves a lot)...but don't, on the whole, outfight fighters. I even know tactics that will nullify most spellcasting...I've played. Seriously, what's that wizard going to do when every time he starts to cast, he sprouts an arrow?

I truly find it sad that every fight assumes that the wizard comes in with 3-4 spells cast as a standard to prove the fighter sucks.

Pretty pathetic.

Have you ever looked at the wizard/sorcerer spell list? It's kinda loaded with standard action spells that can trivialize or remove most threats.

Looked at them? I've played them. I've also played fighters who loved fighting squishy spellcasters.

F%+& this, I'm obviously not going to convince you that Fighters need help outside of combat. I've never argued that Fighter's couldn't deal damage, just that they had s!*%ty will and reflex saves, which get more important as levels go up. They don't have a niche, as the one that they're supposed to have is also filled in by a paladin and the ranger. They got nerfed severely in 3.X, and many of us want to see them better than just the big stupid fighter that can only fight and nothing else.

What we're asking is for the fighter to get better in just a few ways:

1) picking up basically anything and being a total badass with it, rather than just his chosen weapon type. Easiest fix, just give the weapon training/weapon mastery bonuses to all weapons, rather than just 1 group.

2) Give him better saves somehow, so he doesn't get dominated by a stiff breeze. Maybe make all his saves based off of his strength modifier.

3) Give the fighter something to do outside of combat. Don't just give him more skill points, give him the ability to radiate an aura of badassery that makes people want to listen to him. Make it so that people treat him as if their attitute was two steps higher or some such. Give the fighter the ability to influence the narrative.

These are just suggestions that I've made without much thought, but I don't think that they'd overpower the fighter in any way. It would just make him a better badass.

People keep posting very specific builds of paladins that fight longer (because they heal themselves a lot)...but don't, on the whole, outfight fighters. I even know tactics that will nullify most spellcasting...I've played. Seriously, what's that wizard going to do when every time he starts to cast, he sprouts an arrow?

I truly find it sad that every fight assumes that the wizard comes in with 3-4 spells cast as a standard to prove the fighter sucks.

Pretty pathetic.

Have you ever looked at the wizard/sorcerer spell list? It's kinda loaded with standard action spells that can trivialize or remove most threats.

I don't want it changed. Sorry that breaks your unified front. I understand you think it is broken (or you don't, I don't know) but I disagree.

I still don't get why people feel this way. For the most part, what we want is for the fighter to have more narrative control over things, which is what skills (and spells, but that's a conversation in and of itself) do. And the fighter has barely any of them open to him, particularly if he's putting one of them into perception per level.

Then there's the problems of higher levels and what people become. The casters, particularly arcane ones, gain full mastery of magic, and basically have the power of gods.

The Paladin becomes a literal avatar of their god.

The Ranger becomes a dude that's so good at tracking that they can follow a dude to the ends of the earth, then kill them with a single arrow.

And the fighter- the class that includes the archetype of the man that can lead armies, command such attention that he's looked on in awe. The dude that legends get made of just when he walks through a town. What does the fighter get?

A little bit better with one particular weapon.

The thing is, this is specifically a D&D 3.0/2.5/PFism, and they are the only editions where I find playing a fighter more unfun than playing a paladin or a monk, or most any other class. And it's weird, as this phenomenon doesn't exist in any other edition of DnD. In 2e and before, as a part of his class, the Fighter got literal armies at his command. In 4e, many of the Paragon paths and Epic Destinies allow the fighter to have just as much narrative control as the rest of the classes.

My question is, why can't I properly build Hercules, or Cú Chulainn, or hell, even Achilles. Why can't I make Boromir, without taking a feat that DMs either ban or every other class can take, and can probably be better at than you. Why can't I make Ulysses, Thor or any of the other fighters of myth. Why can the 20th level wizard get the ability to change the aspects of reality just by thinking while the 20th level fighter still have to look for contracts with kings because he's just a good fighter.

The reason why the fighter is considered poor isn't because of his combat skill (and even there, the fighter still starts to get outstripped at higher levels), but because he does not have the ability to make changes to the narrative by making unexpected skill checks, or by getting abilities that allow them to bypass skill checks like every other class in the game gets to do.

Honestly, when porting over the monk/fighter from 3.5, they really should have just gone and made them more like the swordsage/war blade.

Yeah, I have a maganamous Lawful Evil charming sociopath that I want to play.

"He helped me with the rats in my house"
"He saved me from a group of bandits"
"He got Mr. Biggles down from the tree."
"He slowly tortured and killed my family and now he's after me because I crossed him that one time."

Zorek struggled up from prone, every muscle in his body screaming in protest. Black lines streaked up his scaly bestial arms. It took the tiefling a second to figure out that they were his veins.

Then a blinding whiteness filled his vision and the Master spoke. One question huh? The bestial man spoke, "Who am I?" Where he was, was secondary at this point, from the brief flash of vision that he got, he was in a stone room. A dungeon of some sort probably. What he was doing there, he didn't know. But not knowing who he is was a big issue, and should be solved pretty quickly.