Fighter "Feat Pools"


Homebrew and House Rules


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Hey guys, less interested in making this "a thing" and more getting opinions on it before I incorporate it into one of my groups. I also don't know if this has been suggested before, but I'm more interested in how it sounds and less about whether I should just have the player play X, Y, or Z instead or discussions about fighter power level or whatever. I'd rather just get some opinions on whether this is feasible or too confusing/complex.

It's basically this:

If a fighter were to gain a bonus feat at level one and every even level, instead they learn two feats for that level "slot." At the beginning of each day the fighter spends 15 minutes doing exercises [getting stoked, whatever] to prepare a feat in each slot as the feat they use for the day. Once per day at first level, and an additional time per day at third and every two levels thereafter, the fighter can, as a free action, swap the feats in one of his feat slots.

In game terms a level 5 fighter would look like this:

Level 1 Slot: Power Attack, Point-Blank Shot

Level 2 Slot: Cleave, Rapid Shot

Level 4 Slot: Improved Initiative, Blind-Fight

Three times per day the fighter can swap the prepared feat in any of his slots for the other one. If any feat prerequisite is swapped out and becomes inactive, any feats relying on that for their prerequisites lose their effect as long as their prerequisite is inactive.

Thoughts?


I have provided Fighters the option to have temporary feat slots that can be trained with an hour per feat--and I think I've seen others do the same.

It's been done. It's not complex, and it is recommended to give Fighters some more toys to play with.

Feel free to playtest it. I will be interested to read your findings.


Great. It didn't seem like it'd be too much from a theorycrafting perspective, but I didn't know if it would turn out to be a Martial Flexibility bookkeeping nightmare. Thanks for the input. Once I have some data I'll let everyone know.

It seems like it'd really help to push fighters into the whole "master of feats and combat!" thing that the class is really being pointed towards.

Grand Lodge

I think you could do with expanding the list of each of those slots to prepare feats in. I'd recommend adding a line of combat maneuver feats that can be prepared, as those in general need beefing up. Give a preparation time of 1 minute (Easy to do if someone has scouted, borderline impossible if you clinked and clanked through the dungeon).

You could make a number of feat "trees" from which they can prepare, and at 1st level a fighter selects two trees, and at 8th and 16th level they can select an additional feat tree. Each tree would have a different set of feats, modelled after ranger combat styles, except the fighter has to meet pre-requisites.

Think of it as a cross between a domain and a Ranger Combat Style.


That seems a bit more complicated than what I have in mind. Having infinite uses/day and a brief prep time is something that could happen though. I'm also considering bumping the number of feats from 2 to 3, but I'd like to see how 2 works first.

I've waived the prereqs on the Improved _____ combat maneuver feats for a while now, so those are more accessible to all of my players by default. I don't want it to be Martial Flexibility because 1) it's already a thing and 2) it's a nightmare. This also needs to feel less like another class ability and more "native" to fighter. Rangers are more locked in on the combat styles but skip prereqs, while I'd like for fighters here to be locked in only on their choices but feel the flexibility and whole "master of combat" thing that they're aiming for, without the bookwork.

I probably should've mentioned that this is going to go live in my group that's still pretty new to the game. I don't want to throw too much at them at once, but the fighter was (understandably) less than enthused at the number of options. I still want this to have the feel of a simpler warrior-type class, because that's what a lot of my players like about fighters when they choose to play them. I've been bouncing this around in my head for a while and figured now was as good a time as any.


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Instead of swapping around we give fighters automatic feat chains. It gives the same result of providing fighters with more options but without the book keeping.

I also find it helps it be believable. Your fighter just doesn't forget how to sunder just because he needs to bull rush in the next encounter.

Combat Techniques Link

Verdant Wheel

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Here's another idea: leave "Bonus Feats" alone. These work as CRB.

Now, drop "Weapon Training I" down to 1st level, scaling to II/III/IV/V at 5th/9th/13th/17th, and change the function as follows:

The fighter may choose one weapon group and one combat feat in the morning and gain it for that day (for that group only). This may be retrained to another weapon group and/or feat each day, depending on which weapons the Fighter practices for 15 minutes with, or simply kept indefinitely until the fighter chooses to retrain.

II (5th): The fighter chooses two feats for one weapon group, and one for another.
III (9th): The fighter chooses three feats for one group, two for another, and one for a third.
IV (13th): Up to 10 retrainable feats (4-3-2-1 for four different weapon groups).
V (17th): Up to 15 retrainable feats (5-4-3-2-1 for five different weapon groups).

If you are worried about your player being overwhelmed by books, restrict it to CRB initially, expanding to APG at 5th, then UC at 9th... (or any single book the player chooses per increase)...


glosz wrote:

Instead of swapping around we give fighters automatic feat chains. It gives the same result of providing fighters with more options but without the book keeping.

I also find it helps it be believable. Your fighter just doesn't forget how to sunder just because he needs to bull rush in the next encounter.

Combat Techniques Link

This is interesting, and definitely could be another way to go. I'm planning to introduce the feat slots as part of a more holistic fighter overhaul, which includes better Will saves, 4+ skill points, and "Prowess Points" that let the fighter do things that're a bit more dynamic in combat. I do want this to be something just for the fighter, though, and I think the other classes like Ranger and Paladin are fairly well balanced (with the usual exceptions).

It seems you've got experience with the feat chains though. I'd love some information on how they work, how they change the way players act, stuff like that, if you have it.

rainzax wrote:

Here's another idea: leave "Bonus Feats" alone. These work as CRB.

Now, drop "Weapon Training I" down to 1st level, scaling to II/III/IV/V at 5th/9th/13th/17th, and change the function as follows:

The fighter may choose one weapon group and one combat feat in the morning and gain it for that day (for that group only). This may be retrained to another weapon group and/or feat each day, depending on which weapons the Fighter practices for 15 minutes with, or simply kept indefinitely until the fighter chooses to retrain...

The very fact that I would have to restrict to certain books makes this more complicated than I want to touch. Why not just give the fighter Martial Flexibility and call it a day? I do already have Weapon Focus and Specialization work for entire weapon groups instead of specific weapons, and for Weapon Training I think that specializing in a weapon group is fine and flavorful. I also would like to see players locked in a bit more on their choices here because permanent feat swapping could generate chameleon characters with less of a sense of specialization or identity. I want at least some commitment to a build, essentially, in order to encourage party dynamics and balance between party members. If that makes sense.

I do like the idea of feat bundles, and I've been toying with making certain feats and feat taxes (like Power Attack, Combat Expertise, Point-Blank Shot and their ilk) either normal parts of combat, removed entirely, or subsumed into another feat. I'd love feedback on how that works if anyone's tried it.

Liberty's Edge

It might be worth checking out the Scaling Combat Feats section in the New Paths Compendium from Kobold Press

Scaling Combat Feats were created to address pretty much this very thing.


What do they do, precisely? I'm looking less at feat scaling or power, and more at giving the fighter more to do and instilling a sense of the type of versatility a master of combat would possess.

Verdant Wheel

Puna'chong wrote:
Why not just give the fighter Martial Flexibility and call it a day?

To keep Brawler as spontaneous feat-user, and Fighter as prepared feat-user.

Think Sorcerer/Wizard.

Puna'chong wrote:
I also would like to see players locked in a bit more on their choices here because permanent feat swapping could generate chameleon characters with less of a sense of specialization or identity. I want at least some commitment to a build, essentially, in order to encourage party dynamics and balance between party members. If that makes sense.

It makes sense. My proposal gives fighter 20 permanent feats (10 character advancement plus 10 Bonus Feats) as normal and then adds 15 retrainable feats (1/3/6/10/15 at 1st/5th/9th/13th/17th). I think this is enough of a sense of identity to give lots of options for both a specialist and generalist. Your Legendary Swordsman uses his permanent feats for Weapon Focus (Katana, Wakizashi, etc), retrainable feats for tactics (Spring Attack, Vital Strike, etc). Your Master-at-Arms uses his permanent feats for tactics and his retrainable feats for weapons.

Plus it makes "Weapon Training" really cool without removing the options to just enhance sheer bonuses.


Puna'chong wrote:
What do they do, precisely? I'm looking less at feat scaling or power, and more at giving the fighter more to do and instilling a sense of the type of versatility a master of combat would possess.

this could help in that department . Its designed to give more interesting abilities beyond static numbers.


This fighter rewrite I did sort of does that


rainzax wrote:
Puna'chong wrote:
Why not just give the fighter Martial Flexibility and call it a day?

To keep Brawler as spontaneous feat-user, and Fighter as prepared feat-user.

Think Sorcerer/Wizard.

Puna'chong wrote:
I also would like to see players locked in a bit more on their choices here because permanent feat swapping could generate chameleon characters with less of a sense of specialization or identity. I want at least some commitment to a build, essentially, in order to encourage party dynamics and balance between party members. If that makes sense.

It makes sense. My proposal gives fighter 20 permanent feats (10 character advancement plus 10 Bonus Feats) as normal and then adds 15 retrainable feats (1/3/6/10/15 at 1st/5th/9th/13th/17th). I think this is enough of a sense of identity to give lots of options for both a specialist and generalist. Your Legendary Swordsman uses his permanent feats for Weapon Focus (Katana, Wakizashi, etc), retrainable feats for tactics (Spring Attack, Vital Strike, etc). Your Master-at-Arms uses his permanent feats for tactics and his retrainable feats for weapons.

Plus it makes "Weapon Training" really cool without removing the options to just enhance sheer bonuses.

Yeah, and that makes sense. I do like the notion that Brawlers are martial sorcerers and fighters are martial wizards. I suppose I just don't feel that Fighters need THAT many feats, overall, to be effective or fun. Just more to do while they're in combat (besides putting out numbers) and out of combat. On that note, too, I do feel like wizards are capable of a few too many spells known, and for some of my players they either create optimal spell lists that never really change OR are completely swamped by the number of choices.

I'm considering meeting you in the middle, by making the bonus feat levels variable but enhancing Weapon Training similarly to how you suggested: Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, Improved Critical, and Greater versions would just be free feats. They'd be "retrainable" in that the fighter can switch them between known weapon groups in the morning. Sort of like how bards get Versatile Performance and apply them to ever increasing numbers of skills, the fighter would start with one weapon group, then two, then three, and so on.

I'd still like the variable feats to be locked in, but 3 would probably be better than 2. It is approaching a level of complexity I'd like to avoid with the fighter, just because it's nice to have a go-to class that doesn't require finger-crushing paperwork for those who want something fun and dynamic, but it's close to a level I'm comfortable with to have a houseruled class that's accessible.

Rhedyn wrote:
This fighter rewrite I did sort of does that

I actually had a really similar idea to that way back around the time of the ACG playtest discussions here (pretty sure I typed that post on my phone waiting for a train...) But! I'm glad to see that there's a lot of similar stuff going around for the fighter. I'd like the Exploit stuff or Prowess or Stamina or whatever be, again, simple, but I also have seen my players enjoy just having more to do with the fighter. Sadly the testing on it only happened over the course of about 3 sessions, so I didn't get much play time on the fixes before that group fell apart.

I'm always of the opinion that simple is better for game design stuff, so I'm sorry if I'm stepping on any toes. The ideas are great, and I'll work on keeping them in mind when I write up my adjustments. I also think that the fighter should have a strong base identity as a core class that the supplementary ones base themselves on. Since gunslingers, brawlers, warpriests, magi, and swashbucklers all have some sort of point pool that they're using, the fighter has to have the daddy of all point pools. This, on top of being the "FEATS! WEAPONS! ARMOR!" class, should be enough to set them apart without overshadowing balance elsewhere.


I'm guessing none of you have seen the Martial Master archetype?


Rub-Eta wrote:
I'm guessing none of you have seen the Martial Master archetype?

That'd be an inaccurate guess.

Verdant Wheel

Rub-Eta,
I'm guessing not only did you not read the actual posts but also forgot you were in the homebrew section?

Puna'chong,
how about:

Spoiler:

Weapon Training (alternate)
A 1st level fighter chooses a single weapon group to "specialize" in. Each day, he may prepare a single feat for which he qualifies that is usable so long as he is wielding a weapon from his specialized weapon group. Preparing the feat this way takes 15 minutes of exercises following a full nights rest, and remains until he chooses to prepare a different feat on a different day.

At 5th level, and again every 4 fighter levels, the fighter chooses another weapon group to specialize in. Further, he also gains the ability to prepare another feat usable with all his specialized weapon groups (at 17th level, he may prepare up to 5 feats per day to use with his specialized weapons).


...


Outside of wording changes, that's a potential way to do the variable feats. It could get into some weird flavor issues with people asking "How come I lose my ability to use Defiant Luck if my sword gets disarmed?" Even then, under this ability category, it'd make more sense to me to have the extra feat just apply towards a weapon-specific feat like Weapon Focus. Maybe instead of tying it to a weapon it could just be a replacement or supplement to Bravery that has a different name. Bravery as an ability mostly feels like an odd and poor way to patch the "good" Will save the fighter should already have, so it could be replaced by something else. Ideally, though, this would be static to fall in line with Favored Enemy/Terrain, Fast Movement/Uncanny Dodge, Aura of XYZ, etc. that other core martial classes have.

Maybe just replace Bravery with something like this?

Spoiler:

Battle Hardened (Ex):

The fighter's experience in battle has taught him how to get out of a scrape alive and adapt to new situations. At 2nd level and every four levels thereafter he gains a +1 bonus on Will saves against fear, and once per day may reroll a failed save against a fear effect.

Additionally, the fighter may learn one non-combat feat that he qualifies for by spending 15 minutes preparing after a full night's rest. At 6th level and every four levels thereafter, the number of feats the fighter may prepare during this time increases by 1, up to a maximum of 5 at 18th level.

I dunno, something like that. Let Weapon/Armor training be its own thing and have bonus feats be relatively locked in. Tie more feats in to a static ability and limit them so there aren't many moving parts, but enough that the fighter can do different things on a daily basis. If you make them non-combat, too, that means that the combat stuff is all trained, specialized, and locked in, but the fighter could grab something like Alertness, Deceitful, Iron Will, stuff like that.


Ah, sorry, guessed wrong.


Rub-Eta wrote:
Ah, sorry, guessed wrong.

No worries, and I was a little grouchy in the response instead of actually taking the time to spell out why the Martial Master isn't really the fix I'm (we're) looking for. Speaking for myself, it's not so much that fighters don't get enough feats, it's that fighters typically have to specialize too much in order to keep up with other martials. Martial Flexibility is a pretty decent--albeit supremely time-consuming and extremely reliant on system mastery--class ability, but it goes along with some other things that create a nice package for what the Brawler class is aiming at. For fighters getting 1-2 extra combat feats is nice, but it sacrifices Weapon and Armor Training, exacerbates action economy, and by 5th-6th level doesn't do a whole ton besides letting the fighter grab Cleave or Vital Strike.

So what it's doing is exchanging the static bonuses that allow fighters to excel (a bit) at being the weapons & armor guy for a couple feats that'll usually end up being small bonuses at the cost of not being able to full-attack that same round. Here, what I'm looking at is giving the fighter a pool of feats that swap around among themselves. This way the fighter is trained for specific things but is versatile within that area of training. Like rainzax so rightly said, the brawler should feel like the martial sorcerer here, with the fighter being the martial wizard. A polearm and archery trained fighter would have a very different feat/"spell" list than a sword'n'board and 2hander fighter, just like an illusion and evocation wizard might differ.

The real question is how many feats the fighter should get and how often they should be able to swap them out. It's also a question of whether these should be locked in or if the fighter should be free to choose, daily, from any feat they want for their slots. I'm of the opinion that the fighter gets plenty of feats for one very specific, one-note build, but not enough class ability stuff to be useful at anything else. That's why I'm suggesting that they get a separate line of feats from their even level bonus feats that allow them to be the master of two different combat styles. Some people are suggesting more, and that's a definite possibility. My fear is giving them too much and making it too complex; I like elegant mechanics that can be simple but deep, and just dumping feats everywhere doesn't feel that way for my bias. I also don't feel like it makes the fighter feel like a "core" class. I'm operating on the philosophy that, with just the CRB, the fighter should compete with other martials at every level of the game in a way that feels unique, balanced, and flavorful.

From my own tests, and from what I'm seeing other people suggest, just getting Martial Flexibility isn't enough on a practical in-game or theorycrafting level to really address this aspect of the fighter issue.


As an example, here's what I have written up right now:

Fighter 2.0

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