What if, unique to the actual fighter class, whenever they took a combat feat that had an attribute requirement... Instead of it being a prerequisite, it instead is an 'untyped adjustment'...
So like when you take combat expertise, instead of requiring a 13 intelligence, it 'bumps your intelligence' to 13.
Or if you take lightning stance... Instead of requiring a 17 dex... it raises your dex to 17.
The feats still work the same they always have for every other class.
But for fighters...
That would allow a fighter to put his point buy and points for leveling into other attributes, like int for better skills...
It always seemed wierd to me the concept of 'you must be this strong or this quick to do this technique'... Instead shouldnt it be 'if you practice this technique, you will *become* this strong or this quick...'?
If they dip they lose the bonus? Try not to immediately say 'no this wont work'
If it creates something bad. spend a half a second to figure out how you could mitigate the bad.
I didnt post this up here so that a cavalcade of reactionaries could come out of the woodwork and call me a tard... I put it up here so folks could give it some serious thought.
Its an idea to be examined and considered and explored. Not a dragon to be slain.
This is a forum. Not 'the octagon'
I admit; that is a concerning premise to consider...Ignoring Prerequisites still seems the best answer.
Otherwise, Situations like the 25 STr prerequisite for Awesome Blow become a means of gaining 25 str at lvl 1.
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I gave it thought though; IS Fighter MAD? I could likely make a fighter that excels, with just a Str score.
Is there a non monster version of that feat?
The monster version still has an improved bull rush and size requirement
Ahhh, you right. I mis remembered the brawler ability; my bad
I gave it thought though; IS Fighter MAD? I could likely make a fighter that excels, with just a Str score.
Yes, you could. But that locks the fighter into a two-handed paradigm. If you want to go TWF, you cant dump DEX even if you don't use finesse weapons. If you want to build a maneuver specialist then you can't dump INT. If you don't want to get dominated you can't dump WIS. Etc etc etc
I mean. Dont get me wrong. Most of my ideas come from a place of being spitballed, horribly thought out, horribly uninformed and, upon closer examination do in fact turn out to be horrible ideas... They are indeed 'spinning a roulette wheel'. I'm hoping one day I get lucky and one of my hair brained schemes turns out to accidentally have promise.
I just want to know that we've taken the idea all the way down the rabbit hole before we decides that it dead ends in a great big pile of something that smells so bad it requires a saving throw.
I mean, at the end of the day, if the only thing it did was make it so fighters had very easy access to some very robust stats... That seems like a good thing. If your chosen feat tree determines your attributes instead of your attributes determining your feat tree... That seems like a GOOD thing... If it would let you do some good things, but not *all* of the good things... That doesn't make it a *bad* thing.
If we want to shoot it down due to napkin math... I want to see the math. Show your work.
Obviously this does nothing to help the folks who think that a fighter can only be relevant if he's a super saiyin or a shinigami from bleach, cleaving holes in space-time... so lets not judge it based on its inability to do something it wasnt designed to do.
My other idea for how to roll up a great fighter in pathfinder is simply to roll up a 2e fighter. He automatically bypasses dr because dr didnt exist in 2e, all of the special tricks dont require feats becaues there weren't any feats in 2e... You want to trip a guy? Its an attack roll. You want to knock a guy down? Attack roll. Pick up the bad guy and throw him off the cliff? No CMD here... You guessed it.. Attack roll. He has really good saving throws that ignore caster level and primary caster stat.
Oh and by the way... About that attack roll. He rolls against thaco... so at level 20 he hits armor class 0 at like 1 or 2 without any strength bonus whatsoever and an ac 10 with like a negative 8 or somethin...... So that armor class 30 dragon? He hits it with a roll of like negative 28... How hard is it for me to pick up the enemy and throw him off a cliff now? Uh... attack roll was successful so uh... How much can you lift?
He wins perception rolls the way a 2e fighter won them.. Not by rolling... By looking for stuff. And listening for stuff. And smelling for stuff.
And when someone casts haste? It no longer affects everyone in the group. It only affects him. And it doubles his attacks per round and ages him a year.
Because nostalgia. Because grognard. Long live the 2e fighter. Heheheheh.
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Making the fighter less MAD:
1. Give them Ranger combat styles to ignore some prerequisites.
2. Change the part that increases Max Dex on Armor Training to a plain AC bonus.
3. Some feature to reroll saves a number if times related increasing with CON.
4. 4 skills per level.
Remove "gatekeeper" feat taxes like combat expertise for fighters
Remove attribute prereqs for fighters
Combat maneuvers only provoke on a failed check for fighters
Yes yes. You all have very good ideas. This thread is about my idea.
Problem is, it's not a very good idea. There is way too much room for abuse. A feature which allows fighter to ignore prereqs is simpler and cleaner.
I just want to know where the abuse is instead of just hearing that there's room for it. If the abuse is that they dumped a stat because they knew they were getting a feat soon to replace those points... thats actually the entire intent of the rule change. Thats not an abuse or an exploit.
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As a player, I would love this idea. I like playing fighters, and this idea is like an exploit in a video game, it would turn my fighter into Stomparella Easymode.
As a DM, I don't think I'd use it because the potential for abuse is really high. I can't envision a paradigm in which taking feats would grant you stat bonuses in addition to the normal bonus. That makes powerful feats, that often have exclusionary pre-reqs, ultra rewarding.
I agree. I just think the chorus that I've heard in these forums is that fighters need something that is ultra rewarding. On the one hand i'm not entirely sure this rule change would tacitly create stomparella easy mode, and on the other hand I think there's a fairly large pathfinder playerbase (and an amazingly larger playerbase on GITPG stuck in 3.5) that, if it did, are entirely looking for a stomperella.
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I agree. I just think the chorus that I've heard in these forums is that fighters need something that is ultra rewarding. On the one hand i'm not entirely sure this rule change would tacitly create stomparella easy mode, and on the other hand I think there's a fairly large pathfinder playerbase (and an amazingly larger playerbase on GITPG stuck in 3.5) that, if it did, are entirely looking for a stomperella.
You could make an easy mode Dynasty Warriors style game easily without something like this.
You're looking for how the abuse could happen? In addition to taking the two weapon fighting chain and getting an ever scaling Dex for free with it, how about getting into the martial arts style feats. The top Efreeti feat could give you a nice boost. How many fighters have a wisdom higher than 17? So a dedicated two weapon Efreeti stylist will have 19 Dex and 17 Wis just from their feats.
If you want fighters to have high stats, try giving them static bonuses at alternating levels.
I guess I just dont personally thingk that giving a fighter a high wisdom attribute and scaling dex makes them broken... And the advantage the system has is that the attributes you get still reflect the feats you've chosen as your 'personal style'
I didnt use to have high dexterity and I used to not be able to juggle. Then I started juggling... And I sucked. But I worked on the juggling feat and now, if you throw something at my left side, there is a good chance I will catch it, where previously it would have been impossible.
The feat improved my dex. Not the other way around.
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I guess I just dont personally thingk that giving a fighter a high wisdom attribute and scaling dex makes them broken... And the advantage the system has is that the attributes you get still reflect the feats you've chosen as your 'personal style'
I didnt use to have high dexterity and I used to not be able to juggle. Then I started juggling... And I sucked. But I worked on the juggling feat and now, if you throw something at my left side, there is a good chance I will catch it, where previously it would have been impossible.
The feat improved my dex. Not the other way around.
Juggling isn't a feat, it's a skill. What you're describing is covered by investing ranks into a skill. You become better by practice.
If you want to do that, try allowing skills to replace stats as feat pre-reqs. Like 3 ranks of perform:juggle for deflect arrows.
Edit: also, if you had poor Dex, you wouldn't have been able to learn to juggle. I've seen truly uncoordinated people try.
I guess we're agreeing to disagree then. Thanks for joining us. Since you're entirely against fixing the mad problem in all of its forms, thanks for showing up just to say you hate the entire pantheon of this idea instead of just mine in particular... Really helps the threads.
This is a really bad idea that makes no sense and warps the value of feats extraordinarily.
For example, if I make the Fighter get extra health for each enemy it hits per round, you make Cleave synergistic because it gives something the Fighter can exploit well.
If you, otherwise, make the Fighter get +5 STR for each feat with letter C it has, Cleave gains value not for itself but for something that doesn't even concern is function and makes no sense.
Design wise, that's crap.
I'm just going to presume you're pushing my buttons until your feedback gains some constructive content
I don't think the feats should raise the stats by any means.
Ignoring prerequisites, however, is another issue entirely.
It does seem silly that:
Brawlers don't need intelligence to take pretty much ANY feats.
Monks and Rangers ignore prerequisites to the feats on on their lists entirely.
Fighters, people who literally fight so much it's in their class description's name, must have all prerequisites for any feats they take.
I think an archetype of fighter that gets progressive ignorance of feat requirements would be nice. That way you can't dip it and forget fighter altogether. Not sure how I'd execute it, though. There's just too many combat feats to make an entire list for each level. Adding combat style feats like the ranger, as has been suggested, is a good idea, though.
I'm really having a hard time seeing why 'ignoring feat requirements' is better than this
Not only does giving them the attribute solve the prerequisite...
But doing that isnt that much better. It really isnt.
I'm having a hard time finding a feat that would give someone better than a 17 in a stat.
Ask any fighter, and that's not just 'not overpowered' its kinda sucky for a fighter.
You'd think I just said we should give fighters the ability to summon 'fist of annihilation'
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Try this, Vincent. Take a fighter. Make him 2nd level. Give him several feats of your choice that have ability score prerequisites. Then multiclass him. If you boosted his Dexterity, make him a ranger with focus in archery style. If you boosted Strength, go barbarian. And so on. One feat to boost an ability score by several points by point buy standards is what you're getting at. It took feats from the Epic Level Handbook to do this previously, at one point per feat. But this fighter could start life with a commoner's stats and then by 4th level have quite a bit of Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, and Wisdom depending on race and feat choices. Easily so. Yet no one else has the option to just take feats and improve in the same way.
No the whole point is not to multiclass him.
This is an idea for how to help a fighter be better by choosing to be exclusively a fighter.
The second he chooses another class, all of the ability scores he got from feats go away and remove his access to any of the feats he's chosen that he would then no longer qualify for.
Attribute bonuses are valuable. Very valuable. So valuable you only get a +1 to one stat every 4 levels. Meanwhile, feats come for free every odd level, an extra one if you're human, and are frequently sprinkled in almost every class.
A feat granting an attribute bonus, even just +1, is extremly unbalancing. Granting instantaneous jumps is beyond ridiculous, not from a realism point of view as much as it is from a gameplay point of view.
It's a matter of balance.
To offer a point of comparison, to gain a permanent +1 bonus to an attribute using magic requires the Wish spell, a 9th level spell available at the absolute earliest to a player at 17th level...which costs a ton of cash to cast as material components, by the way. To gain any further bonus requires repeated in-a-row castings of the same spell. Dropping 5 wishes in a row requires a huge investment in your primary spellcasting stat, and quite probably other magic items and even higher spellcasting ability than 17th level.
i updated my previous post with more detailed explanation.
Basically: you are giving power to structural metagame around the fighter instead of a tangible power to the class.
Imagine a feat comes with a 20 STR prereq. Suddenly, the Fighter power spikes.
Please, read my previous post, and remember: just because rogues need a buff, i don't advocate we give them a dc 40 instakill ability. i analyze the class, find the flaws, fix them.
Check my first post with suggestions. Notice how the make the fighter less MAD without it making trascendend stats.
Well. I don't know what to tell ya. I'm not feeling the level of oh crap that the rest of you guys are feeling. Guess i'm done with another episode of sharing ideas with the public.
Thanks yall. Have fun fixin fighter your own way. I'm out.
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The issue is that it's a sloppy mechanic. And it's ripe for abuse in multiclassing. Fighter is already one of the most popular classes for dipping for BAB/feat/proficiencies but now if spend that feat on power attack you can up your STR from 5 to 13. Or if you take combat expertise you can jump it from 5 to 13. Or take two weapon fighting and jump your DEX from 7 to 15.
That's a problem.
I'm not gonna say it again
I'm done being polite. I gotta get outta this monkey cage.
Byenara.
You want to make Fighters better, but you dismiss ignoring stat pre-reqs for feats?
Feats are pretty much the only class feature the Fighter gets. Letting them get feats more easily, and without having to have higher stats is both making Fighters better and less MAD. It fulfills both design goals.
Having stats raise based on feat pre-reqs, but only for single class Fighters, is a jarring inversion of the game system's internal logic. It works contrary to everything about the feat system. That's why people have a strong negative reaction.
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1. Ignoring multiclassing doesn't make it less broken. See my post about the value of attributes versus feats.
2. Pouting and storming off when someone finds logical fallacies in your ideas is childish. True creators take constructive criticism into account and modify their creations, not throw a tantrum like a four-year-old in the face of disagreement.
3. Your title was the elimination of MAD problems with fighters. Ignorance of attribute prerequisite does so effectively and elegantly. It works remarkably well for the brawler, monk, ranger, and slayer. Why wouldn't it be imported, instead of coming up with something new? "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"
The whole point is I dont give two furrbies about the opinions of the people who dont like it, which I think I was pretty clear about on my second posting. If what you have to say is
It sucks I hate it... I hate the whole concept because it makes fighters suck less and mighty mean my optimized gish isnt the king of fightin' mountain anymore...
Dont bother posting. Move on.
'I hate the idea' isnt exploring the idea.
'I dont want players to have the things this would let them have' isnt exploring the idea.
Its an opinion. You have one. Great. Move on.
I'm not here to talk about your feelers.
I'm here to talk about the idea, not how much you hate it.
There is no logical fallacy in my idea. It simply is different than your idea.
This would allow fighters to put attribute points in places they normally wouldnt. It does a better job of that than simply ignoring prerequisites. It in fact gives them more attribute points, which in my opinion is a good thing. I literally am not interested in your idea that it is a bad thing. Great. You think that way. Move on.
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I've heard people saying that being broke is tough, so I've got an idea to deal with it. What if, instead of needing a high credit score to get a loan, getting a loan gave you a high credit score?
Only if you're single though. If you get into a relationship or get married, you lose the increase to your credit score.
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Dude
you asked for feedback
i Told you my thoughts and they had nothing to do with multiclassing
the problem is with design
but you can pretend I'm being negative instead of honest of you want
don't post here if you don't want truth
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Who said "it sucks, I hate it" or anything along those lines, aside from one post from one person I see among a list of over 30? Nobody mentioned optimization, nobody mentioned gishes.
Almost all replies have been constructive criticism as to why it is a bad idea. Some have been countering opinions to solve the same problem you originally presented.
News flash: The suggestions/homebrew subforum is not solely for "I have this idea - tell me how great it is!" It's for evaluating a custom idea for it's merits and downfalls, and helping to develop it into the absolute potential it can possibly achieve.
I don't know you, and so I won't assume anything about your age, but your reactions have been close-minded and defensive. Frankly, if there is anyone here plugging their ears and blatantly saying "I hate it", it has been you. You essentially just stated "I am here to present my idea and see how many people agree with me. If you don't like it, move on."
'I dont like it' isnt constructive.
'I dont like it because it does what I wouldnt want it to' is not one iota more constructive.
'Here's an idea I have that isnt it.' Is not constructive feedback.
Constructive feedback is telling me all the stuff that you'd be concerned about without telling me how that would ruin your day.
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Why are you being such a child? People have told you what the problems are.
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I'm concerned it would result in frequent high stat increases for Fighters.
I think that's what everybody is worried about.
You could take feats to get a 13 in nearly every stat. Some feats would carry you to 19 or 20. That's concerning.
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Well, I reevaluate my hesitation to presume your age, that's for certain.
Either that or you, sir, are a master troll, to be commended at your abilities.
Ok. So cliff notes here...
That sounds terrible.
Here's my idea.
Followed by the only constructive feedback yet... That people would abuse it with dipping. Which I agree I wouldnt like. I must make a change.
I revise my idea to disallow dipping. Constructive adjustment to legitimate feedback.
Do my idea instead
It is a bad idea. Do this instead.
does a good job of explaining the effects my idea would actually have, without judgement.
Thank you.
She then follows up with more specifics on exactly what effects my idea would have, but this time finishes with a
Rediculous.
Dont just dislike the idea.
Hate the goal of the idea.
It is a bad idea.
Like big time.
Takes a brief moment to post a useful scenario with cleave synergy that i'm not sure I understand. At least its describing his concern. Thank you.
Again specifically uses crap to describe the idea.
Dont like the idea
Points out the seeming inconsistancy that fighters require so much to be good fighters
'Do my idea instead'
Lathiira ignores multiclassing ban from third post.
Here's why I think its too good. (I don't share it, but I appreciate your concern.)
Its not just too good. Its so good its a bad idea. (oh god, here we go again)
At least kindly giving some context, which I appreciate
Updated his previous post from 'big time crap' to 'big time crap with cleave synergy context'
Reminds me from my earlier posts that I havent given this much thought, which I admitted earlier in the thread
Ignores multiclasing/dipping ban revision from post like.. 3.
Points out exactly what would happen with my idea
Calls it a bad thing
how dare you ignore the possibility of doing our ideas instead after telling us you want us to explore your idea
changing fighter in such a way can only lead to the dark side.
something about credit scores?
Doesnt like his previous posts of 'Its a big time bad idea and is specifically crap' being interpreted as 'negative'
Asks for a list of people who said, and i'm paraphrasing here, 'it sucks and I hate it'
That would beSsalarn: Terrible
Blakmane: Not very good
Oly: Rediculous. Shoot it down
Secret Wizard: really bad. crap.
Scythia: Jarring
Greenteagamer: not less broken
So now that we're all caught up. Thats 6 out of 10 posters telling me not just what they're concerned about, but making sure to use those concerns to 'grade' the idea. I'm interested in your concerns because some of them I will share and some of them I wont. What I'm not interested in hearing is that its a bad idea.
What ever happened to 'no wrongbadfun'
Its an idea. And its a different idea that does things you might not like
Tell me the things that you wouldnt like. Maybe I'll agree maybe I wont.
Not how bad you would like it and how bad the idea is as a result of the fact that you wouldnt like it.
If we could keep all the parts that arent bold, and throw out all the parts that are in bold, thats the kind of conversation i'm interested in having.
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Let me just dump all my stats to 7s and 18s, then quickly raise the 7s with feats. I might not even want the effect of the feat, but the "prereq" makes it worth it.
How would this look if we made it cleaner (removing the desire to want feats just to bump your stats, making other designers have to be careful about prereqs for feats because while they gate access for some, they supercharge others)?
Give Fighters a higher PB.
And that could be okay. Some people already assign different PB by tier of class, which can work as long as there aren't multiclass dip shenanigans. It's more elegant.
I guess we're agreeing to disagree then. Thanks for joining us. Since you're entirely against fixing the mad problem in all of its forms, thanks for showing up just to say you hate the entire pantheon of this idea instead of just mine in particular... Really helps the threads.While I am against "fixing" what is seen as the MAD "problem" (which I see as not a problem but a case of tradeoffs), some "fixes" I oppose only because I don't see MAD as a "problem," in any class, and many classes need to be made more MAD IMO.
Your idea I would oppose even if I saw MAD as a problem, because if gives large stat bonuses, which are worth far more than any feat currently is, even much more than Leadership, which is usually banned as overpowered.
If MAD is seen as a legitimate problem (I don't, but lets say it is), the logical course is to ignore stat requirements for feats, not to let a Fighter take 7 Int, then take Improved Trip and gain 6 points of Int by doing so.
I wont deny that i'm examining this problem because I get a lot of feedback that fighter sux and mad is the problem. If its not a problem at your table thats coo. On the other hand I don't ban leadership because that level of power isn't a problem at my table... so those things are all about perspective. What you deem as 'the logical answer' I deem 'maybe not going far enough'... I'm ok that we have different opinions until my opinion is called the wrong one.