No seriously, who actually used more than one weapon group?
Fewer people than wanted to, because switching weapons can be fun and having a giant pile of feats and money invested over the course of a game so that you the player have fewer valid options in combat is not fun.
I certainly wanted to do so, recently. Gave it the old college try, even. Didn't work well.
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I can't find them on the SRD's yet, I have a favor.
Could someone post the text of the Warrior's Spirit ability (the AWT that grants weapon bond), the Armor Materials Mastery, and, I think, the Advanced Armor Materials mastery? (the one allowed you to get an ability based on the material of your armor, and the second treated your armor like ALL materials, I think).
I'd like to keep them as a reference for build recommendations. I believe the Warrior Spirit is the best AWT to take at level 5. Bane when needed is too cool to pass up, and if you get Abundant Tactics at 9th with Gloves of Dueling, that's 8 times a day you can use it...
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More or less my experience too. I conceptually really like switch hitters, but actually building one is unnecessarily difficult and messy and has really, really bad returns....
Oh, I dunno. Works perfectly well with rangers and paladins.
Oh, right, Fighters! yes, fighters crash and burn the switch hitter idea. Bad bad fighters.
So, everyone knows that fighters don't ever have to take versatile training or the armor master's one for skills right?
If needed, Warrior Spirit can nab you versatile training temporarily, and if you select a skill you already have trained, you immediately swap the ranks for another skill for free with no time or money spent [RAW].
On cue skills is a nice thing to have, unless it's one of those skills that requires a long time to use.
Fighters reward single weapon progression, this is well known. Switch hitting as a fighter is asking to be exactly one peg above mediocre at damage.
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Hey, while we're here—what's the name of that one super optimized diviner? I've been trying to remember it for a while now.
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So, everyone knows that fighters don't ever have to take versatile training or the armor master's one for skills right?
If needed, Warrior Spirit can nab you versatile training temporarily, and if you select a skill you already have trained, you immediately swap the ranks for another skill for free with no time or money spent [RAW].
On cue skills is a nice thing to have, unless it's one of those skills that requires a long time to use.Fighters reward single weapon progression, this is well known. Switch hitting as a fighter is asking to be exactly one peg above mediocre at damage.
Yeah, but you should have at least one ranged and one melee option. And WT sucks at giving you those options.
Yeah, but you should have at least one ranged and one melee option. And WT sucks at giving you those options.So, everyone knows that fighters don't ever have to take versatile training or the armor master's one for skills right?
If needed, Warrior Spirit can nab you versatile training temporarily, and if you select a skill you already have trained, you immediately swap the ranks for another skill for free with no time or money spent [RAW].
On cue skills is a nice thing to have, unless it's one of those skills that requires a long time to use.Fighters reward single weapon progression, this is well known. Switch hitting as a fighter is asking to be exactly one peg above mediocre at damage.
Agreed.
If I may opine, it should come online at 1st level. In my own fighter fix, I also had it include a better version of ranger combat styles, and included free feats with class features like armor training giving endurance.
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Fighters are feats. That's their defining trait. Even the fighter fixes being lauded in this thread are just more feats.
But when you have a character that is wholly defined by feats, in order to make them stand out at all, feats have become an absolutely miserable experience for non-fighter martials. They're awful, awful abominations and doing anything even slightly outside the ordinary game of 'power attack with a big hunk of metal' and suddenly you're pushing yourself back to level 7 to get things online for many builds.
And why? Well because now "but a human fighter can do it at level 2!" becomes a selling point.
My thought on that matter becomes that condensing feat chains in general won't actually break the fighter, and would unlock more options to other classes. If combat maneuvers were 2 feats instead of 3, and their advanced behaviors condensed to 3 feats instead of 5 (like all the riders for grappling), now any character could be a master of that thing by level 10 or so. The fighter can do it by 4, but if feats are built with scaling in mind rather than flat bonuses, that doesn't matter as much (like power attack, combat expertise & the skill related general feats like acrobatic or alertness). So, while everyone is finishing their combat specialization at 10, the fighter is finishing 2 (or 3)...but that doesn't make them any more powerful at solving a specific problem. They still are only going to do so much damage because there are only so many damage feats you can stack. Everything else just allows versatility. Or if you want a less combat focused fighter, you can take combat feats only on your even levels & skill related feats for your normal progression.
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Y'know, 20th level, basically godlike, super theorycrafted? Anyone?
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Y'know, 20th level, basically godlike, super theorycrafted? Anyone?
Ron Weasly? Wait no, he only works in theory...
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Tools a fighter can buy but a brawler can rent to a much greater effect. Other classes have been stealing fighter only feats for a long time, and only recently have they made it harder.Any idea why it was decided to create sets of abilities like Ki Pool, Rogue Talent, Rage Abilities, and Companion rules, and then not have something similar for fighter?What else do you call combat feats that say fighter level X?
*looks at all the classes and archetypes that steal Rogue Talents*
Oh yes, that seems very different from Rogue Talents.
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Y'know, 20th level, basically godlike, super theorycrafted? Anyone?
Arkalion I think, made by Anzyr.
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Arkalion! Knew it started with an "Arc". And I was thinking it was Anzyr, but I couldn't find it when I was searching his threads.
Fair warning, the body stealing part of it doesn't quiiiiite work as advertised. Magic Jar will kill you if you are outside the range of the spell when you die. The Harbringer Demon is very likely to fight back and not appreciate the little game. There's a very, very exacting and very favorable reading of Simulacrum to even get that body in the first place. And you can argue if it really fits into the WBL.
On the plus side, Possession now exists. The only problem is that the best way to possess people, Major Mind Swap, isn't on the Sorcerer/Wizard list. And as far as I know there's no way to cheat it on that list and Psychic casting is a pain to get a hold of. So, it's always going to be a difficult to refresh the body snatcher trick.
...personally, I wonder why even bother with all that when Wish exists. It's more of a, you can do this over the course of a game maybe and there would be a lot of plot points revolving around trying to keep your demon body around, rather than an actual playable statblock.
Unless you are a 20th level Psychic to whom such play is more natural. I think if you wanted to make a true terror caster you would have to stat up a 20th level Psychic.
I also like Arcanist more for theory 20th level builds than Wizard. School Savant is fine if you fancy that. By 19th the disadvantages of Arcanist are barely relevant and you can get a lot of mileage out of Arcane Exploits.
Fair warning, the body stealing part of it doesn't quiiiiite work as advertised. Magic Jar will kill you if you are outside the range of the spell when you die. The Harbringer Demon is very likely to fight back and not appreciate the little game. There's a very, very exacting and very favorable reading of Simulacrum to even get that body in the first place. And you can argue if it really fits into the WBL.
On the plus side, Possession now exists. The only problem is that the best way to possess people, Major Mind Swap, isn't on the Sorcerer/Wizard list. And as far as I know there's no way to cheat it on that list and Psychic casting is a pain to get a hold of. So, it's always going to be a difficult to refresh the body snatcher trick.
...personally, I wonder why even bother with all that when Wish exists. It's more of a, you can do this over the course of a game maybe and there would be a lot of plot points revolving around trying to keep your demon body around, rather than an actual playable statblock.
Unless you are a 20th level Psychic to whom such play is more natural. I think if you wanted to make a true terror caster you would have to stat up a 20th level Psychic.
I also like Arcanist more for theory 20th level builds than Wizard. School Savant is fine if you fancy that. By 19th the disadvantages of Arcanist are barely relevant and you can get a lot of mileage out of Arcane Exploits.
Dude what?
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He's talking about Arkalion
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Fighters have been receiving an awful amount of stick recently.... :((
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I also feel like that's more a failure of the system. It's not that having multiple weapon groups of weapon training is bad per se, but that since subsequent weapon groups have lower strength, and weapon focus / specialization only apply to single weapons, the game system itself is stacked against encouraging a player to have multiple weapon groups, which I think is a flaw.No seriously, who actually used more than one weapon group?Anyone who wanted to be a switch hitter, I'd assume...it just took them too long to be good at it.
Almost certainly.
I really think there needs to be a few ways to broaden Weapon Focus and subsequent feats. It feels like a rather large gap in the design that makes things like going TWF with different weapons not really worth it. Board and Board is a better playstyle than Sword and Board because you have to do something to get that sword to work.
It's obvious to see from the designs used in WMH that the way Weapon Focus and such work is outdated.
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One of these days they will make pretending to swing a stick satisfying.
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Bane is a pretty good choice but you had best hope you or a member of your party can identify what you are fighting if you want to use it.
You don't need to identify a creature to set your Bane weapon ability for it with a pretty high chance of success.
01—05 Aberrations
06—09 Animals
10—16 Constructs
17—22 Dragons
23—27 Fey
28—60 Humanoids (pick one subtype)
61—65 Magical beasts
66—70 Monstrous humanoids
71—72 Oozes
73—88 Outsiders (pick one subtype)
89—90 Plants
91—98 Undead
99—100 Vermin
First, any creature type you've fought before is fair game, if anyone in your party ever identified it, or if you dragged its head back to town and had it identified there.
Furthermore, most peasants could (untrained) tell apart a Giant (humanoid), Elf (humanoid), Human (humanoid), or Dwarf (humanoid). Similarly, Plants, Constructs, Dragons, and Oozes are pretty easy. Many types of Undead are similarly easy (if I see a walking skeleton, I'm going to guess 'Undead'). A number of Outsiders (Evil) would also be pretty easy to make a guess at. In a worst case scenario, you just say "I think it's a Humanoid (Giant)." Maybe you're right (it's a Fire Giant). Maybe you're wrong (it's a Flesh Golem that you thought was a giant). Either way, it's legal for you to add Humanoid (Giant) Bane to your weapon.
If you guess wrong, well you burned one point. Not the end of the world. But I'd hazard a guess that in most campaigns, you'll have ~50% of foes where you could identify what type of creature they are without needing a knowledge check (often because you've fought the same 'type' of enemy over and over again, and someone has identified them at some point), with another 20-30% you could guess correctly (leaving 20-30% that you can't identify the type, and need someone in your party to ID them if you don't have the appropriate Knowledge ranks).
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I have like 10 favorited post. And this is one of them.
Heh. Ten. Ah, good times.
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snip
That was extremely enlightening. I knew full round attacks were new, but I didn't know Fighters had such versatility and mobility on the battlefield in the days of old. Guess that's why so many pine and drool over pounce or similar options.
I wonder how much would be fixed if they where just given that level of mobility again. At the very least they'd be better at, well, fighting.
Also, it's been said once in this thread and time and time again. Mundane in a fantasy world should not equal bound by realism. I'll never, ever understand how Smash the Air is a problem, but just having a dude bro in armor with a sword along side a wizard, druid, cleric and sorcerer at high levels (And all the nonsense that comes with them) is actually believable. Oracle? You can be a unicorn or create a rainbow bridge because mystery. Fighter? Nah. You can putz around, unable to swing your dual short swords together whenever you make a meaningful movement in battle.
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snipThat was extremely enlightening. I knew full round attacks were new, but I didn't know Fighters had such versatility and mobility on the battlefield in the days of old. Guess that's why so many pine and drool over pounce or similar options.
I wonder how much would be fixed if they where just given that level of mobility again. At the very least they'd be better at, well, fighting.
Also, it's been said once in this thread and time and time again. Mundane in a fantasy world should not equal bound by realism. I'll never, ever understand how Smash the Air is a problem, but just having a dude bro in armor with a sword along side a wizard, druid, cleric and sorcerer at high levels (And all the nonsense that comes with them) is actually believable. Oracle? You can be a unicorn or create a rainbow bridge because mystery. Fighter? Nah. You can putz around, unable to swing your dual short swords together whenever you make a meaningful movement in battle.
Pounce by Any Other Name.
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I know a lot of people are saying that you can build a good fighter now and that good tools exist and while that's true that doesn't tell the whole story.
Building a good fighter often means building around their weaknesses, building to compensate for what they struggle with in order to make something effective and that's a problem, because you have to work around all these holes to build a good fighter. The very fact that 'you can build a good fighter' is even a statement with merit at all is pretty damn telling. No one goes around gloating about how they can make good summoners or wizards or magii or barbarians or even gunslingers after all.
Secondly, the problem is only partially the fighter itself and partially what fighters do to the rest of the game. Fighters are feats. That's their defining trait. Even the fighter fixes being lauded in this thread are just more feats.
But when you have a character that is wholly defined by feats, in order to make them stand out at all, feats have become an absolutely miserable experience for non-fighter martials. They're awful, awful abominations and doing anything even slightly outside the ordinary game of 'power attack with a big hunk of metal' and suddenly you're pushing yourself back to level 7 to get things online for many builds.
And why? Well because now "but a human fighter can do it at level 2!" becomes a selling point.
So it's not just that fighters suck, it's that the fundamental design of fighters actively harms everyone else in the game too.
More or less my experience too. I conceptually really like switch hitters, but actually building one is unnecessarily difficult and messy and has really, really bad returns.No seriously, who actually used more than one weapon group?Fewer people than wanted to, because switching weapons can be fun and having a giant pile of feats and money invested over the course of a game so that you the player have fewer valid options in combat is not fun.I certainly wanted to do so, recently. Gave it the old college try, even. Didn't work well.
This is the distinction I am trying to get at with feats being the problem. We gated a whole bunch of basic things behind feats, which in and of itself isn't a problem. But then we gave the fighter a billion feats and called it done. That presented the problem of the fighter being able to take all the feats, which we don't want.
Idealy, I would simplify the combat feats in the game, with far fewer prereqs. Things like whirlwind don't need 3 prereqs, and combat expertise can be dropped off an infinitely high cliff.
Then we take the fighter and design him around the concepts that actually work in the game. Give him specific and thematic abilities that revolve around doing interesting things when he swings a sword or shoots a bow, rather then just doing it with slightly higher numbers. And someone made attempts to do this. Twice. First in 3.5 with the book of 9 swords. And then dreamscarred press in pathfinder.
The andswer to this is to redesign the fighter to fit in mechanically with every other class. Give him a suite of abilities to choose form in which he can use them on a limited basis. You can then make those things cool and interesting without having to make them a massive investment (ala spells), and you don't have to worry about what happens if every other class on the planet also gets that ability as you do with feats.
That's the actual answer here. Make the fighter play like everyone else, and you solve the problem. It requires a redesign, but its what has to happen without going in a massive circle indefinitely. You cant fix a broken concept by tweaking whats broken. You need to replace it with what works. Stop making feats the gateway to all the cool combat stuff, make it specific to the class, make it limited use per day to match everything else, and make them cool, interesting and potent.
No seriously, who actually used more than one weapon group?
I don't find it unbelievable that a character could have a reach weapon + two handed sword + special metal morningstar (for B+P damage) + concealed emergency dagger + ranged option. That could be as many as 5 weapon groups, although only 1 or 2 would get used the majority of the time.
One of my issues with the fighter is that the base has nothing to work with. So unless they unchain it and add new class features it, and it's archetypes, will continue to be uninteresting.
Like compare the Spellcasting fighter to the bloodrager. Either it's clear that the fighter should be weaker, or the DEVs value things very differently than the boards do.
Another example is the Viking fighter and a barbarian.
The fighter at lv7 has: 3 feats, intimidate faster, rage as lv4, +2 AC if using a shield, and can trade his newest combat feat for a rage power. As it levels it can get more rage powers by giving up it's combat feats and it's AC increase slowly.
A barb lv7 has: rage, 3 rage powers, DR, fast move, uncanny dodge, Trap sense (I guess it's something), Improved uncanny dodge and more HP.
since a barb often trades feats for rage powers lets say they are equal.
1 feat, faster intimidate, AC +2 with shield, access to fighte feats
must be equal to
DR 1/-, fast move, uncanny dodge, Trap sense, Improved uncanny dodge and more HP, 6 rounds of rage and access to the better rage powers sooner, 14 skill ranks, better class skills.
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No seriously, who actually used more than one weapon group?I don't find it unbelievable that a character could have a reach weapon + two handed sword + special metal morningstar (for B+P damage) + concealed emergency dagger + ranged option. That could be as many as 5 weapon groups, although only 1 or 2 would get used the majority of the time.
And a Slayer, Ranger, or Paladin can use all of these weapons with the same effectiveness while a Fighter has to choose which he wants to be worse with.
Another comparison
Fighter lv8 vs Tempered Champion Paladin lv8
Fighter has armor training 2, 5 feats, bravery, WT 1
Paladin has smite evil x3, detect evil, good will save, divine grace, lay on hands, Aura of courage, divine health, mercy x2, channel, Aura of resolve, 2 feats that count as fighter at full level, Divine bond giving +2 once per day +1 times per LoH sacrificed.
so WT will be considered comparable to divine bond as burning LoHs to have it up for a full dungeon is reasonable assumption. Bravery is a pale comparison to aura of courage, but will let it count just for fun.
So armor training 2, 3 combat feats
is comparable/equal to
smite evil x3, detect evil, good will save, divine grace, lay on hands(less than normal but still relevant), Divine health, mercy x2, channel, Aura of resolve
[sarcasm]
It's easy to see that having 3 extra combat feats is basically as good as having a good will save, boost to all saves and smite evil. And obviously LoH compares to armor training as both influence HP. But then the paladin still has Divine health and Aura of resolve.
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I don't think Fighters are the solo source of PF problems. The way the class is designed does it no favors imo. Their nothing interesting imo. I wanted to take a Fighter in a recent game. I built one with Herolab and I found myself losing interest. I would build one then delte it and vice versa. I went with Samurai Sword Saint Archetype. It may do less damage just better and more interesting imo. Granted Paizo has slighlty improved the situation. It's still not enough imo
I'm just glad unlike many similar threads. Those who say nothing wrong with Fighters. Then go out of their way to downplay how effective magic is. Unless the player or DM or both new members to the hobby or going out of their way to play a caster badly. Magic in all editions is very versatile imo.
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I don't agree necessarily with the strict definition of the thread title, although I think many issues with the game do tend to be most apparent in the fighter or tend to be a bigger hassle.
In theory a class built around feats is a great idea. However since fighters lack much in the way of other class features, they need a lot of feats just to bring them up to par. And as a martial class the feats they need tend be locked behind feat chains. So in practice the fighter probably ends up more feat starved than practically every class which gets less feats.
I think a lot of unchained and recent player focused books have tried to get around this by building off of existing fighter features, or trying to make feats better for fighters via stamina, etc. The fighter is I would say in a much better place in two years ago, but the core class, probably more so than any other class with maybe the exception of monk has all these weird systems stacked on other class aspects. It's like someone trying to add a new floor to their house by just climbing atop the roof and just hammering in supports into the existing roof without any further modification. Any true improvement of the fighter is probably going to rely on changes to the class in a new edition (or maybe future unchained if that is likely).
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I think Fighter is just the tip of the iceberg, in my opinion, all of the core classes with the exception of maybe Ranger and Bard are the reason for all the balance issues in PF. The core classes were poorly designed and are nearly all broken, either super powerful or so weak that they just can't coexist together in the same party in any kind of harmony.
If I were running a game, first thing I would do is ban core classes. I bet that would take care of many of these balance issues.
Design Manager
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I think Fighter is just the tip of the iceberg, in my opinion, all of the core classes with the exception of maybe Ranger and Bard are the reason for all the balance issues in PF. The core classes were poorly designed and are nearly all broken, either super powerful or so weak that they just can't coexist together in the same party in any kind of harmony.
If I were running a game, first thing I would do is ban core classes. I bet that would take care of many of these balance issues.
On the one hand, I don't really want to agree with that statement. We use Barbarians, Paladins, and Druids (as well as Bards and Rangers) all the time.
On the flip side, we use enough 3pp and Paizo expanded materials that there's generally no more than one of the CRB classes in the party at a time, and it's very rare that that class is a Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Monk, or Rogue, and if it is a Monk or Rogue it's typically Unchained these days.
I'd say that the statement "the Core Rulebook is the most imbalanced book in Paizo's library" is certainly true. I think there's more space between the Wizard's performance ceiling and the Fighter's than probably any other two classes, and the Cleric is pretty much right next to the Wizard. While there are certainly other books that have both full casters and martials, I don't think any of them have quite the same gaps. Cavaliers may not be Oracles, but they're still capable of dropping some of the top DPR while buffing their allies, Kineticists may not be Psychics but they seem to belong in the same game, etc.
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One of my issues with the fighter is that the base has nothing to work with. So unless they unchain it and add new class features to it, and its archetypes, will continue to be uninteresting.
I think that Paizo tried to do that in the Advanced Player's Guide. The result was the Cavalier. The Cavalier was not exactly an Unchained Fighter; for the Figher represents a man at arms and a cavalier represents a knight, but the Cavalier does appear to create a Fighter-like class, more like the Fighter than the Barbarian, Paladin, or Ranger, that has a base to work with.
The notion of "base" illuminates the classes. Look at other full BAB classes. Barbarian's base is rage. The Bloodrager is a barbarian with bloodline powers instead of rage powers. The Ranger's base is wilderness survival with favored terrain, good skills, an animal companion at 4th level, a smidgeon of spellcasting at the same level, and a narrow combat focus based on combat style and favored enemy. The Slayer's base is the focus on taking down a target that was common to both ranger and rogue. The Gunslinger's base is the firearm, with a grit pool to overcome the built-in flaws in firearms and add some panache to the monotony of a single type of attack. The Swashbuckler is the Gunslinger without the gun, and its base is the swashbucking style generated by the panache pool. The Paladin represents a holy knight, and its base is divine powers to overcome the most dire challenges and reasonable combat prowess for the rest.
The figher's base is a blank slate warrior and extra feats. Not only is building on a base with structure easier than building on a blank slate, but swoosh's theme is that the Fighter's blank slate is the reason for feat trees and narrow feat focuses.
Without prerequisites or with only attribute prerequisites, a feat could be taken at first level, which means it cannot be overpowered for a first-level character. But a feat that is appropriate for a first-level character could be useless due to better options at higher levels. Imagine if Power Attack did not scale, that it stayed -1 to attack and +2 to damage at all BABs. A high-level character who has another way of adding damage to his melee attack, such as a Flaming Burst enchantment on his sword, could decide that a mere +2 to damage is insignificant, especially when it is tied to a handicap. Two-Weapon Fighting is a non-imaginary example. It is worse than not scaling. When a TWF character at BAB +5 has a choice between one attack at +5 or two attacks at +3/+3. Upon leveling up to BAB +6, his choices become +6/+1 or +4/+4/-1, extending the -2 penalty to hit to the iterative attack with no additional benefit to balance the additional penalty. To gain a benefit to go with the penalty, he has to spend another feat for Improved Two-Weapon Fighting.
Thus, a feat meant to be stronger than a first-level feat needs a prerequisite. Some feats, such as Craft Wand and Leadership, explicity call out a level. Other feats require minimum BAB or skill ranks to delay the level. Some class-based feats, such as Extra Mercy for a paladin, are tied to a class ability no-one has before a high level. Other class-based feats, such as Extra Rage Power for a barbarian, explicitly tie in to the prerequisites on the class ability. Note that these depend on structure from the class, such as class abilities and BAB progression.
The last and least sensible method delaying a feat until after first level is the feat chain. If a feat has two feats for prerequisites, such as Cleaving Finish requiring Power Attack and Cleave, or Focused Shot requiring Point-Blank Shot and Precise Shot, then no-one can take that feat at first level without bonus feats from their class. If a feat has one prerequisite feat, then only humans can take the feat at first level without bonus feats from their class. Using a feat chain to delay aquisition of powerful feats until the correct level would give a chain (First-level feat 1) -> (Fitrst-level feat 2) -> (Third-level feat) -> (Fifth-level feat) -> (Seventh-level feat), etc. Darn those humans for their bonus feat lengthening the chain.
Feat chains do not always work for that purpose. For example, Spring Attack, which requires Dodge and Mobility, also requires BAB +4. Thus, a 3rd-level human rogue or any 5th-level single-class rogue cannot take this feat that is highly useful for rogues. Otherwise, rogues could be too powerful, I guess.
Why use a feat chain? First, some chains are natural: Greater Trip improves Improved Trip, Furious Focus improves Power Attack, and Acrobatic Steps improves Nimble Moves. Yet natural chains are good candidates for replacement with scaling feats. Second, some feats intended for first level are could be made extra strong by adding a feat tax of a weak feat. Precise Shot and its feat tax Point-Blank Shot might fit that category. The third reason for feat chains is to favor classes that gain bonus feats. They could finish a chain early in order to gain a strong feat early. Except that the strength of the feat at the end of the chain seldom makes the entire chain worth all the feat slots. One worthwhile example for a Fighter is Rapid Shot at on the Point-Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot, Manyshot chain. And the high-Dex Fighter cannot claim the next prize, Manyshot, at 3rd level because of the additional BAB +6 requirement.
In theory a class built around feats is a great idea. However since fighters lack much in the way of other class features, they need a lot of feats just to bring them up to par. And as a martial class the feats they need tend be locked behind feat chains. So in practice the fighter probably ends up more feat starved than practically every class which gets less feats.
That up-to-par aspect is annoying, too. A Barbarian gains one more hit point, two more skill points, rage, and fast movement, losing only heavy armor proficiency compared to a Fighter. A Paladin gains good will save, detect evil, and smite evil compared to a Fighter. A ranger gains four more skill points, good reflex save, and favored enemy, losing only heavy armor proficiency compared to the fighter. The Fighter's first bonus feat has to make up for that.
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One of the other reasons the Fighter gets brought up so much, is that people want to like him. The Fighter was pretty much essential until the drastic nerfs he was hit with in 3rd edition (which have been preserved through 3.5 and into Pathfinder), but there's still books, movies, cartoons, etc. that feature characters people identify as "Fighters", but then they discover that the PF Fighter is arguably the worst class in the game for playing anything that resembles the character they want.
What nerf? The fighter was originally the class you kind of defaulted into when you rolled crappy and couldn't qualify for a real class.
In 1st edition, a ranger and a paladin were both subclasses of the fighter meaning they had every single ability the fighter had plus a bunch of special extra stuff.
In 2nd edition, they added a single thing fighters could do - weapon specialization which gave them a +1 to hit, +2 to damage, and an extra attack every other round. Rangers and paladins got everything else a fighter had plus lots of benefits.
Going from 2nd edition to third edition, a fighter gains proficiency with every single weapon in the game (which they did not previously have; they needed to spend their limited weapon proficiency slots) and they gained a ton of feats.
The only possible nerf was moving from the (entirely optional) non-weapon proficiency system to a more robust skill system. But that also gave them the ability to gain Move Silently, Hide in Shadows, etc., if they really wanted.
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Design Manager
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One of the other reasons the Fighter gets brought up so much, is that people want to like him. The Fighter was pretty much essential until the drastic nerfs he was hit with in 3rd edition (which have been preserved through 3.5 and into Pathfinder), but there's still books, movies, cartoons, etc. that feature characters people identify as "Fighters", but then they discover that the PF Fighter is arguably the worst class in the game for playing anything that resembles the character they want.What nerf? The fighter was originally the class you kind of defaulted into when you rolled crappy and couldn't qualify for a real class.
In 1st edition, a ranger and a paladin were both subclasses of the fighter meaning they had every single ability the fighter had plus a bunch of special extra stuff.
In 2nd edition, they added a single thing fighters could do - weapon specialization which gave them a +1 to hit, +2 to damage, and an extra attack every other round. Rangers and paladins got everything else a fighter had plus lots of benefits.
Going from 2nd edition to third edition, a fighter gains proficiency with every single weapon in the game (which they did not previously have; they needed to spend their limited weapon proficiency slots) and they gained a ton of feats.
The only possible nerf was moving from the (entirely optional) non-weapon proficiency system to a more robust skill system. But that also gave them the ability to gain Move Silently, Hide in Shadows, etc., if they really wanted.
The nerfs were fundamental game changes. Ranger, Paladin, and others hung off the Fighter chassis, broadening it instead of replacing it. Fighters had some of the best saves in the game, and before non-weapon proficiencies and later skill points he was just as able to participate in non -combat encounters as any other class. The fighter also used to have narrative power baked directly into his class progression, with things like keeps and followers native and unique to him.
3rd edition destroyed the Fighter. It chained him to the incredibly limiting full attack mechanics, gave him the absolute minimum skills and the weakest non-combat facility of any class in the game, and gave away things that used to be his strengths, like weapon and armor proficiencies and great saves, to tons of other classes. Where the Fighter used to be essential, valuable, and unique, he became one particularly pathetic option amongst many.
Nowadays, the Fighter is theoretically the top combatant in the game. In practice however, to be good at combat you have to be able to occupy and control territory, which the Fighter is terrible at. You have to be strong defensively, which with two bad saves the Fighter isn't. He can't move and maintain his damage output, his ability to accomplish feat trees faster becomes less relevant at every level after 5th, his ability to master more combat maneuvers is equally less relevant as more and more monsters simply aren't subject to them, etc.
As the game grew around the Fighter, each new change made him less relevant, less effective, less necessary, until ultimately we reached the current point where his very existence may very well be a hindrance to the game rather than any kind of positive contribution.
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I really think there needs to be a few ways to broaden Weapon Focus and subsequent feats. It feels like a rather large gap in the design that makes things like going TWF with different weapons not really worth it. Board and Board is a better playstyle than Sword and Board because you have to do something to get that sword to work.
It's obvious to see from the designs used in WMH that the way Weapon Focus and such work is outdated.
Make weapon focus apply to a weapon group. If you're a fighter, it applies to all weapon groups you have Weapon Training with. Make the fighter's capstone Weapon Mastery apply to all weapons in all weapon groups he has weapon training in. And make all weapons you have weapon training in get the same bonus (highest), even for weapon groups you pick up in later levels. Now you have a reason to not trade away weapon trainings because it does make you an effective & versatile combatant (still probably not worth taking multiple weapon groups vs the available advanced training options, but now a fighter built the right way actually does feel like he's the most competent with a plethora of weapons)
Without prerequisites or with only attribute prerequisites, a feat could be taken at first level, which means it cannot be overpowered for a first-level character. But a feat that is appropriate for a first-level character could be useless due to better options at higher levels. Imagine if Power Attack did not scale
This is why I think feats should scale, and there's precedent in the existing system: Combat Expertise, Power Attack, Alertness and similar skill related feats, Skill Focus. What if cleave / great cleave wasn't a chain, but cleave let you hit more and more targets as you gained BAB? Then let other related behaviors be the feat tree (though I'm at a loss for what to add to cleave, but all the augments to grappling are a good example of this).
[spring attack stuff...]Otherwise, rogues could be too powerful, I guess.
I kind of want to call this out. Too powerful against what? Other classes as is? The bestiary as is? Perhaps (I kind of doubt it). But this is a system where it is trivial to tweak numbers & behavior all over the place. The only real issue is that playtesting (especially higher levels and with so much content) becomes a nightmare, so you're more or less stuck relying on theorycrafting. But perhaps I'm being idealistic, hoping that there's some way to achieve a perfect balance, where one can look at all of the feats and lament "why can't I take them all?"
Why use a feat chain? First, some chains are natural: Greater Trip improves Improved Trip, Furious Focus improves Power Attack, and Acrobatic Steps improves Nimble Moves.
My thought is use a feat chain when it adds new behavior. Greater combat maneuvers in general are good examples of these, as are a few of the improved combat maneuvers that add new usability (improved bull preventing your target from standing aside). But more accurately, things like Ki Throw with trip, Stand Still with Combat Reflexes (or Pin Down, whatever it is), Bodyguard again with Combat Reflexes, or perhaps a way to tie Gory Finish with Dazzling Display and another feat to improve those. Things like weapon focus, dodge, even the bonus to a combat maneuver from a feat like greater grapple could all scale with level / bab / skill ranks. Don't make a character keep spending on the same thing to just be able to keep doing the thing. Feats should have a meaningful impact on your character's performance (either now in the case of a new ability, or over time in the case of scaling abilities).
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[spring attack stuff...]Otherwise, rogues could be too powerful, I guess.I kind of want to call this out. Too powerful against what? Other classes as is? The bestiary as is? Perhaps (I kind of doubt it).
I was leaving open the possibility that the "BAB +4" requirement had a reason, but I can't think of one.
It isn't due to mobility. Spring Attack had the same prerequisites in D&D 3rd Edition, but the rogue used Tumble skill to move around the battlefield. Pathfinder accidentally nerfed tumble by linking its DC to the opponent's CMD, which made tumbling much more difficult.
Tumbe DC 15: Tumble at one-half speed as part of normal movement, provoking no attacks of opportunity while doing so. Failure means you provoke attacks of opportunity normally. Check separately for each opponent you move past, in the order in which you pass them (player’s choice of order in case of a tie). Each additional enemy after the first adds +2 to the Tumble DC.
It isn't due to the rogue using Spring Attack as a tactic to deny a foe a full-attack action. That matters most after 6th level, and the rogue has BAB +4 at 6th level.
Maybe the "BAB +4" requirement on Spring Attack is to limit another 3/4 BAB class, such as cleric or bard. I have seen bards take Spring Attack to be able to attack and retreat to safety behind a fighter in heavy armor. But that is a tactic for letting a vulnerable class contribute a little, not a game-breaking tactic.
My gut feeling is that the prerequisite "Dex 13, Acrobatics 5 ranks" would be more appropriate for Spring Attack if the designers want to avoid 3rd-level Spring Attacks.
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I've seen well built fighters roflstomp through campaigns and make all the rangers, druids, paladins, and wizards feel meek and useless.
I've also seen well built fighters be nothing more than a liability and resource drain on the party.
Ivory tower game design creates the problem where just selecting fighter is a mistake in some games, while in other games that same fighter is the most skilled, tanky, utility, DPR person in the group. Not all choices are equal in this game. Once you get to a certain point of system mastery, you create characters that rise to the campaign or can be throttled under the guise of "saving resources". The fighter lacks resources and thus can never be a proper class in the 3.x system with the vast gulfs of strength between 2 characters of the same race and class.
The feat to allow Bravery to apply to most Will saves has the same issue- you're charging the Fighter feats to actually get a "real" class feature equivalent to what everyone else got for freeWell, worse than that really. They're not just feats, they're limited access, heavily level gated feats.
You can almost get a good will save, but not until 5 and if you do get it at 5 you delay your extra skills or other bonuses until 9 or 10 or 13.
Which in a way is almost even worse, because instead of just fixing the problems with the fighter, the game makes you choose which problem you want to fix.
Why do you have to wait till 5th level. You can get the feat at 2nd level unless there is some important feat your fighter needs at 2nd I don't see reason to wait till 5th.
You are right though about having to burn feat for this, it should be class feature. I'd go further allowing the fighter to choose a bonus to reflex or will save instead of bravery. I'd give the fighter 4 skill points. I'd change how weapon focus feats work. Allowing them to scale by fighter level at level 4 and ever 4 after the fighter's weapon focus feat applies to another weapon. This would apply to specialization, greater weapon focus and great weapon specialization.
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Thanks GM 1990, I mentioned the introduction of weap specialization at the end of 1st ed in in one of my spoilered analysis of the change and system problems.
If people seriouly played 1st through 3e plus games and looked at the core mechanical changes from 2e to 3e you would be able to see where martial and skill based characters got the the very short end of the stick.
For the run of 3e till now, many people have had the perception that there were problems with certain classes, namely martial and skill based classes. It isn't skill points or giving specific feats to fix problems, the problem is the system that governs these classes.
Considering what was lost from 2e to 3e: role/party relevance, save paradigm, better niche skill system (nwp), hp inflation vs. needing a feat to gain shadow of relevance and an open skill point based skill system (where they are short changed) I would consider 3e+ games a system design failure. At least when it comes to this class, but I would include a few others that are skill based or lean heavily on feats to flesh out their class abilities.
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I think the Pathfinder system itself is pretty good, and most of the classes they've introduced outside of the CRB do fairly well within it. I would say my major issues are-
1) Overly large / unnecessary feat chains. As others have mentioned, feats seem like they've been twisted up to the point where they're 50% taxation for the sake of taxation, 20% "so situational you should only take this for a specific type of game", and 10% patches for things that didn't get done right the first time. The remaining 20% consist of the better style feats and basically all metamagic feats. Note that despite the Wizard getting 5 bonus feats including Scribe Scroll, virtually none of the crafting and metamagic feats have other feats as prereqs, and none that I can think of off the top of my head have more than 1 other feat in their chain.
2) Skills capping out in functionality. It's a fantasy world, and above-human levels of proficiency should have above-human results. Many skills are totally replaced by magic as early as 5th level, and others only continue to be effective when combined with magical options.
Both of those are choices made within the system, not results of the system framework itself.
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One of the other reasons the Fighter gets brought up so much, is that people want to like him. The Fighter was pretty much essential until the drastic nerfs he was hit with in 3rd edition (which have been preserved through 3.5 and into Pathfinder), but there's still books, movies, cartoons, etc. that feature characters people identify as "Fighters", but then they discover that the PF Fighter is arguably the worst class in the game for playing anything that resembles the character they want.What nerf? The fighter was originally the class you kind of defaulted into when you rolled crappy and couldn't qualify for a real class.
In 1st edition, a ranger and a paladin were both subclasses of the fighter meaning they had every single ability the fighter had plus a bunch of special extra stuff.
In 2nd edition, they added a single thing fighters could do - weapon specialization which gave them a +1 to hit, +2 to damage, and an extra attack every other round. Rangers and paladins got everything else a fighter had plus lots of benefits.
Going from 2nd edition to third edition, a fighter gains proficiency with every single weapon in the game (which they did not previously have; they needed to spend their limited weapon proficiency slots) and they gained a ton of feats.
The only possible nerf was moving from the (entirely optional) non-weapon proficiency system to a more robust skill system. But that also gave them the ability to gain Move Silently, Hide in Shadows, etc., if they really wanted.
Minor Points:
As noted above, Weapon Specialization was a Fighter thing in 1e, as was Double Spec. In a game where easy bonuses from stats was NOT happening, double spec was huge.
2nd, fighters could use any weapon. rangers were restricted to ranger weapons...which admittedly were good enough it didn't matter.
3rd, Fighters were unlimited in armor choices. Rangers had to wear lighter armor or lose their skills.
4th, Paladins were restricted to 10 magic items, TOTAL.
5th, Rangers had to be Good, and Paladins Lawful Good.
6th, Rangers were restricted in race choices, and Paladins had to be human.
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2e did nothing for fighters, but did give up the loot restriction for paladins.
3e is notable because it gave EVERYTHING AWAY. Multiple attacks. High stat bonuses. easy access to th/dmg numbers. Good defenses and saves. High DPR vs HP ratio.
It nerfed move and attack. It neutered weapon spec. Blah blah blah.