Give it free Variant Multiclassing, combat stamina as a bonus feat, and have it count as two levels higher for the purposes of using Automatic Bonus Progression.
Unchained almost literally says in the book that to make an unchained fighter, you simply give them access to the Stamina system.
This forum is full of attempts to rework the fighter. I personally haven't found any that impress me.
I would love to see a Paizo unchained Fighter. And maybe a Cleric for that matter. I feel like both of these have alot of "restriction" from previous editions, and could use some freedom
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I have since not upgraded the language to match the Drill Sargent archetype.
At present, I would like to retool the entire class (or maybe just write an archetype) that nixes the spell shattery stuff and incorporates the various archetypes that focus on one specific type of combat (two handed fighter, two weapon warrior, etc) and incorporate their special features into a sort of 'fighter bloodline' or 'combat school' choice that the player gets to make at first level.
Give them a strong will save.
I'd focus on the "controlling the flow of battle" part in the fighter's role description. Active and passive abilities that deny opponents options and give the fighter and his allies other ways to influence combat than just full-attack.
As a sidenote, I think the often mentioned poor Will save is technically not a fighter problem, since it affects other classes as well. If there is a discrepancy of 6 points between a good and a low base save at level 20, that is going to have an impact--no matter whether it's the fighter who is likely to get dominated or the wizard who is likely to get petrified. The solution should be to reduce the gap between high and low saves in general, but that would be a fix to the 'saving throw problem', not the 'fighter problem'.
But if a boost to Will saves for classes with low Will saves is a must-have, doesn't that prove my point that the underlying problem is the gap between good and poor saves?
Here is what I put for Unchained Fighter and some other classes for a wishlist for Unchained 2 (I put stuff for other classes first, except Bard afterwards, so you have to scroll down a bit). Instead of maintaining compatibility with archetypes (although some would be still compatible), my idea was to condense most of them into Martial Paths. The version below is edited for clarity (most notably changing Bonus Defensive/Offensive Combat Feat to Defensive/Offensive Combat Training, to reduce confusion), and I added a new Variant Multiclassing below this:
Basic changes: Add 2 more skill points per level, go to d12 Hit Dice, and make abilities available more a-la-carte to enable condensing a lot of the current archetypes into a few new archetypes. Actually, this should also be done for other classes, but the Fighter needs it worse than at least most other classes.
Fighter 1: Martial Path Skill and Weapon Proficiencies (corresponds to modifications made by various archetypes), Martial Path Combat Feat (in some cases this is just a Bonus General Combat Feat)
Fighter 2: Martial Path Signature Ability (corresponds to special abilities that various Fighter archetypes get at levels 4n + 2, such as Bravery for the default Fighter), Combat Style Feat (same choices and functionality as Ranger Combat Style feats)
Fighter 3: Defensive Combat Training (includes things like Armor Training and its substitutes)
Fighter 4: Bonus General Combat Feat
Fighter 5: Offensive Combat Training (includes things like Weapon Training and its substitutes)
Fighter 6: Martial Path Signature Ability, Combat Style Feat
Fighter 7: Defensive Combat Training
Fighter 8: Bonus General Combat Feat Chain (length 2 -- get 2 feats in a chain in 1, and can rearrange existing feats into chains without counting against the Fighter's standar ability to swap Combat Feats, and thereby open up single feat slots; this only applies to General Combat Feats)
Fighter 9: Offensive Combat Training
Fighter 10: Martial Path Signature Ability, Combat Style Feat
Fighter 11: Defensive Combat Training
Fighter 12: Bonus General Combat Feat Chain (length 2)
Fighter 13: Offensive Combat Training
Fighter 14: Martial Path Signature Ability, Combat Style Feat
Fighter 15: Defensive Combat Training
Fighter 16: Bonus General Combat Feat Chain (length 3 -- the Feat Chains get longer now, and you can rearrange feats into chains of 3 to open up single feat slots and feat chain slots of length 2)
Fighter 17: Offensive Combat Training
Fighter 18: Martial Path Signature Ability, Combat Style Feat
Fighter 19: Martial Path Defensive Capstone Ability
Fighter 20: Martial Path Offensive Capstone Ability, Bonus General Combat Feat Chain (length 3)
* * * * New VMC (Fighter) * * * *
If you choose Fighter as your secondary class, you gain the following secondary class features:
Martial Path Ability: At 3rd level, you choose a Fighter Martial path and gain that Martial Path Ability as a Fighter of your character level - 1.
Defensive Combat Feat: At 7th level, you gain the first Defensive Combat Training associated with the Martial Path you chose at level 3, as a Fighter of your character level - 4.
Offensive Combat Training 1: At 11th level, you gain the first Offensive Combat Training associated with the Martial Path you chose at level 3, as a Fighter of your character level - 6.
Defensive Combat Feat: At 15th level, you gain the first Defensive Combat Training associated with the Martial Path you chose at level 3, as a Fighter of your character level - 8.
Offensive Combat Training 1: At 19th level, you gain the first Offensive Combat Training associated with the Martial Path you chose at level 3, as a Fighter of your character level - 10.
Special: You can choose Fighter as your secondary class even if it is your primary class, as long as you choose Martial Paths for your primary and secondary classes that have both different Defensive Combat Training and different Offensive Combat Training; the benefits of Martial Path Signature Ability from both Martial Paths stack even if both Martial Paths have the same Martial Path Signature Ability.
I personally grant them access to the stamina tricks along with a new class feature called Stamina Training - every 4 levels, the fighter reduces the cost of all stamina tricks by 1 or counts as having paid 1 more stamina in the case of feats that let you choose how much to use (such as Channel Smite). Doesn't fix the issues with the action economy or two bad saves, but those are better fixed by changes to the underlying system. I use the act-based economy from Unchained, and I suggest raising the value of a bad save for all classes to help fix the other issue.
Combat Stamina as a built-in class feature with a bonus to the pool size equal to their fighter level. He doesn't become fatigued when stamina = 0 and fatigue doesn't prevent him from using stamina. At later levels, he can expend stamina to ignore / remove fatigue and exhaustion. After touching up some of his existing class features a bit, incorporate a stamina use into each one of them to do things like minimize the result on the weapon damage dice against him, reroll lower results on his damage dice with weapons to which his weapon training applies, or apply his Bravery bonus to any Fortitude or Will save. There's more but this is the biggest thing.