Can we talk about how the Cavalier is just better than the Fighter?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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Rhedyn wrote:
Frosty Ace wrote:

Half-Elf Fighter.

Stats: 14,16(+2),12, 12, 13

Feats:

Lvl1: Weapon Finesse, Power Attack
Lvl2: Improved Bravery
Lvl3: Courage in a Bottle
Lvl4: Unhindering Shield
Lvl5: Trained Grace
Lvl6: Inspiring Bravery
Lvl7: Weapon Focus
Lvl8: Greater Weapon Focus
Lvl9: Armor Specialization, Warrior Spirit

Use an Elven Curved Blade, boost dex, let the static damage do it's work and have fun with all around good saves/aura against mind-affecting. (Touch) AC is really, really good, initiative will be top notch, and you could forgo warrior spirit for even better switch hitting with archery.

Edit: You could also just be human with EWP for the skill point and change stats a bit for some chr to be a back up face.

Which claim are you trying to make? What conditions are you comparing yourself to the cavalier? No mount, No Challenge, Mount and Challenge, just mount, or just total party contribution?

Also what does this build look like out to 20? I've been pretty content with fighter's 1-9. It's after than that things start sucking for me.

? You were saying one can't make a build with all these great Fighter options. Here's a Fighter with good saves, buffs the party, great damage, good switch hitting possibilities, hella defense, decent skill points off the bat, and anything after level 5 is subject to change depending on what you want, since all the aforementioned scales with level and stat boosts. It actually serves to the point that you don't need to pigeonhole a Fighter build to be durable and effective.

You say past 9 it will start to suck, but why is that? It's saves, defense and offense all scale incredibly well as the levels increase. At 10 alone it is immune to fear when intoxicated. Hell what I posted wasn't even made to be optimal or anything. It's really just working off of Fighter class features, something I thought of in about 5 minutes, but is still likely to be effective.

Paizo Employee Design Manager

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Fighters are better than Cavaliers, a proof.~

Archery is the best combat style, both in terms of raw damage and versatility.
Fighters are better at archery than Cavaliers are.
Ergo, Fighters are better than Cavaliers.

QED.

Mounted archery is better than archery, which makes the pendulum swing in the other direction. Also, challenge on ranged attacks, such as with a luring cavalier, is crazy good since that's upwards of 20 extra damage per attack (or 40 if you want to burn resources like crazy) and archery generally gets more attacks. Combine a mount with a firearm where you can move 50 ft. a round without penalty while firing at touch AC up to range increments away and it's really nasty, but regardless of whether you're using archery or firearms luring cavaliers can perform up there with the best archers in the game.


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I think it would be best to state clearly what fighters are and are not looked at for this whole conversation.

Pointing to an archer and saying "it doesn't have a mount and challenge" is like pointing at a brawler and mocking their lack of Jack of all trades, or a rogues inability to be a level 9 caster.

If we are only saying "Cavaliers make good mounted combatants compared to other mounted combatants for non mount based classes" I'd like to think the answer would be "I should hope so".


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Ssalarn wrote:
PossibleCabbage wrote:

Fighters are better than Cavaliers, a proof.~

Archery is the best combat style, both in terms of raw damage and versatility.
Fighters are better at archery than Cavaliers are.
Ergo, Fighters are better than Cavaliers.

QED.

Mounted archery is better than archery, which makes the pendulum swing in the other direction. Also, challenge on ranged attacks, such as with a luring cavalier, is crazy good since that's upwards of 20 extra damage per attack (or 40 if you want to burn resources like crazy) and archery generally gets more attacks. Combine a mount with a firearm where you can move 50 ft. a round without penalty while firing at touch AC up to range increments away and it's really nasty, but regardless of whether you're using archery or firearms luring cavaliers can perform up there with the best archers in the game.

Fairly certain Fighters are the best archers because of feat necessity. They also have more room for "fun and useful" Archery feats like Ace Trip and Snap Shot with Combat Patrol. There's also several Fighter archetypes that can end up combining movement with a Full Attack, tho that's somewhat moot since Archery is strong because of more Full Round Attacks, and unless you're a Sohei, you're waiting a while for Mounted Skirmisher (Also, range increments are extremely generous. You can even make them an after thought on a throwing build).

Not gonna dispute the strength of challenge, or mounted combat, but those two things are not even close to invalidating a Fighter. It'd be like saying Barbs are invalidated by a Fighter since Barbs aren't the best at Dex TWF, Thrown weapons builds or switch hitting.


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The splatbook thing is bunk because the Cavalier has all the same problems. Narrow Frame is Animal Archive. Monstrous Mount is Inner Sea Combat. Indomitable Mount is Cities of Golarion and tied to a specific country. The Fighter stuff is also mostly condensed at this point. When people talk about the good stuff Fighters can do it's basically all from Weapon Master's Handbook and Armor Master's Handbook. There's a smattering from other stuff (I think the improved Bravery stuff is Ultimate Intrigue?) but I think that's true of pretty much any build. Some feat that would be nice to have but doesn't make the build tucked away in a splatbook somewhere. But both Fighter and Cavalier clearly need the splatbook love. Barbarian can at least get by with hardcovers.


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And the splatbook complaint is still obnoxious to me as there are not one BUT TWO sites who collate all this information for free, so it isn't even as though you have to have the physical books outside of PFS games.


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Book access issues will always be relevant as long as PFS is around though. Telling a new player they should play a Cavalier over a Fighter because they can just fix the mount issues is going to end in disappointment when they realize all the "fixes" are in another book. Houserules color the specifics of build advice and PFS is a pretty common set. And while I've never experienced it myself (and would never do it while GMing) I've definitely seen other people talking about being limited in what books they can use. A Cavalier with Core, APG, UC, and UM is not going to be great. Neither is the Fighter. Meanwhile, the Barbarian has everything they need.


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Bob Bob Bob wrote:
Book access issues will always be relevant as long as PFS is around though. Telling a new player they should play a Cavalier over a Fighter because they can just fix the mount issues is going to end in disappointment when they realize all the "fixes" are in another book. Houserules color the specifics of build advice and PFS is a pretty common set. And while I've never experienced it myself (and would never do it while GMing) I've definitely seen other people talking about being limited in what books they can use. A Cavalier with Core, APG, UC, and UM is not going to be great. Neither is the Fighter. Meanwhile, the Barbarian has everything they need.

Just another reason i profoundly dislike PFS. Punishes martials, leaves casters mostly intact.

The Exchange

Bob Bob Bob wrote:
Book access issues will always be relevant as long as PFS is around though. Telling a new player they should play a Cavalier over a Fighter because they can just fix the mount issues is going to end in disappointment when they realize all the "fixes" are in another book. Houserules color the specifics of build advice and PFS is a pretty common set. And while I've never experienced it myself (and would never do it while GMing) I've definitely seen other people talking about being limited in what books they can use. A Cavalier with Core, APG, UC, and UM is not going to be great. Neither is the Fighter. Meanwhile, the Barbarian has everything they need.

I like the barbarian for the same reasons I like sorcerer. They're great classses to just leap in to honestly.

They've got some great thematic stuff and are pretty easy to use effectively.

Sadly, this thread isn't about that though


Are we talking a Fighter with or without Stamina Combat from Unchained?


Wrath wrote:

I have No issue with you personally.

I have an issue with your logic and statement.

Telling people that restrictions for mounts is irrelevant is disengenuous. You provide one very specific build to counter what is easily a large portion of adventure paths.

That's a very restrictive build concept in order to make your chosen class effective.

Perhaps, instead of telling folks our arguments are irrelevant (your words), you should have said "Cavaliers have a work around for that by taking this build"

This is something that pops up in all these discussions about classes and is not unique to you, or me or this thread. Problems are posed, then people say "bah, that's stupidly easy to overcome because yadda yadda yadda ". The issue is when the problem posed is pervasive and the solution given is restrictive.

It seems to me that the playfulness and subtlety of my post was completely lost on you. I hope you don't conflate maturity with dourness, because I do enjoy me some fun, especially when talking about games.

I do find it curious how offering one solution, in your eyes, seems equivalent to asserting that it's the only solution. Not a very charitable approach. From what I've read, you are eager to argue, not to collaborate. I conclude that you are choosing to be hostile, which is a shame because you are a very eloquent communicator, and I like eloquent communicators.

Aside, the most obvious approach for a Cavalier is to simply have a build that considers both mounted and unmounted situations, and also to seek equipment to resolve the large-mount-small-corridor issue. Even something as simple as a wand of Reduce Animal [Drd2, lasts 3 hours, 4500gp for 50 uses] can allow the large mount to be medium (but likely unable to be ridden) and stay with the party until mounted combat becomes viable.

Do I honestly think that the Cavalier is better than the fighter? On paper, when mounted absolutely. Out of combat, yes. Unmounted in combat, I think that comparing the aggregate of fighters vs. aggregate of cavaliers would give the fighters the advantage.

But picking a class that's better on paper is merely one factor (among a host of factors) in measuring the effectiveness of any given character: Build choices, equipment, player resourcefulness, player enthusiasm, gaming group customs, house rules, campaign theme & setting, GM bias... these things all weigh heavily into character effectiveness, and can easily overshadow any theoretical class comparison.

There. There's a post that's more in line with your sensitivities-to-date.


I will always pick a Cavalier over a fighter because the first is simply a more interesting class with better abilities per level. The Fighter may get more feats. Yet feats to me at least will never compare to or be as good as class features. Another issue with the Fighter is the need to have access to a bunch of sourcebooks to be interesting imo. A Cavalier can be used right out of the box. The Mount may be a liability depending on the type of campaign. Other than that a Cavalier gets more skill points and with their orders some interesting abilites as well.

Don't get me wrong I don't hate fighters yet why would I play one when their are other classes which di the same to a slighlty lesser degree.


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What exactly does the Cavalier get that makes it better "out of combat" than the fighter if i might ask for some clarification there?

Granted they have 2 more skills per level base, but with very little investment as of the weapon/armormasters handbook fighters can rival rogues for sheer # of skills and can craft magic armor at the same cost in feats as a full caster vs having to buy master craftsman first. That alone seems to make them better out of combat to me.

Edit: and fighter needs 2 splatbooks at the cost of the book you buy to get the cavalier class in order to get everything discussed here. not "a bunch"


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IMO the Cavalier has some advantages out of combat
(1) - All the "party face" class skills (Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Sense Motive) lets the Cavalier be an effective party face.
(2) - The mount (a Cavalier class feature) adds more eyes & ears to the party, plus scent. This can even allow tracking.
(3) - The mount (a Cavalier class feature) adds significant encumbrance relief to the party, and enables long distance travel.


In terms of "no-spellcasting" classes my personal order of preference in terms of "What I would want to play" would be something like-

1) Kineticist
2) Swashbuckler
3) Vigilante
4) Fighter
5) Unchained Monk
6) Barbarian
7) Chained Monk
8) Brawler
9) Slayer
10) Cavalier
11) Unchained Rogue
12) Gunslinger
13) Chained Rogue

(Not including classes that have spellcasting and can trade it out, like the Paladin, but I am including the Vigilante because it doesn't have spellcasting by default.)


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Malignor wrote:

IMO the Cavalier has some advantages out of combat

(1) - All the "party face" class skills (Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Sense Motive) lets the Cavalier be an effective party face.
(2) - The mount (a Cavalier class feature) adds more eyes & ears to the party, plus scent. This can even allow tracking.
(3) - The mount (a Cavalier class feature) adds significant encumbrance relief to the party, and enables long distance travel.

Ok. I'll grant the mount and scent, but enabling long distance travel isn't really that impressive to me, by mid level most parties i know are travelling by teleportation or have enough gold that buying a horse is a negligible expense, parties only move as fast as their slowest member after all.

Face skills? Eh, Versatile training and Adaptable training negate that almost completely, you can make a party face out of the fighter now, at least as well as any class that doesn't get a class ability that adds to one of those skills (like investigator or inquisitor)


Versatile Training and Adaptable training while good require one two different sourcebooks when I can get the same with the Cavalier as is in the class. To me it's not a ringing endorsement of a class that requires splat books to be useful. To get all the new fighter options requires four sourcebooks.

-Armored Masters Handbook
-Weapon Masters Handbook
-Ranged Tactcis toolbox
-Melee Tactics toolbox

It's a decent cash investment to a class that should have had that in the core book from day one.


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The Thing From Another World wrote:

Versatile Training and Adaptable training while good require one two different sourcebooks when I can get the same with the Cavalier as is in the class. To me it's not a ringing endorsement of a class that requires splat books to be useful. To get all the new fighter options requires four sourcebooks.

-Armored Masters Handbook
-Weapon Masters Handbook
-Ranged Tactcis toolbox
-Melee Tactics toolbox

It's a decent cash investment to a class that should have had that in the core book from day one.

I'm sorry but that isn't much of a compelling argument. If you're not down with splatbooks you have to come to the conclusion that the power level of bad classes is just fixed. Monk and rogue will always be terrible. Splatbooks are HOW you fix underpowered classes.

Paizo Employee Design Manager

Ryan Freire wrote:
The Thing From Another World wrote:

Versatile Training and Adaptable training while good require one two different sourcebooks when I can get the same with the Cavalier as is in the class. To me it's not a ringing endorsement of a class that requires splat books to be useful. To get all the new fighter options requires four sourcebooks.

-Armored Masters Handbook
-Weapon Masters Handbook
-Ranged Tactcis toolbox
-Melee Tactics toolbox

It's a decent cash investment to a class that should have had that in the core book from day one.

I'm sorry but that isn't much of a compelling argument. If you're not down with splatbooks you have to come to the conclusion that the power level of bad classes is just fixed. Monk and rogue will always be terrible. Splatbooks are HOW you fix underpowered classes.

Monk and Rogue got fixed with 1 book. Fighter took 6. The Monk and Rogue fixes were also in a single hardcover, not scattered around between a handful of softbacks and randomly wedged into a hardcover that otherwise has nothing to do with the options being presented.


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So your issue is more with how it isn't condensed rather than the class?

Imagine if they took a book where they condensed all the splat book options under one hard cover with updated rules. I'm sure no one would take issue with that.

Oh wait. They did. And people complained about reprints.

Lose lose.

Honestly I feel bad for this company sometimes. They can't win.


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The thing I'm not clear on about this "you've got to own a lot of books" argument is I'm not sure how to do the accounting on the "books you need" thing. For example, a lot of spellcasters are based on how good their spells are, and spells are spread over a hundred books. Blade Tutor's Spirit is amazing on a Magus, but are we considering "Melee Tactics Handbook" as a must-have book for the Magus?

Like I'm pretty sure I can build a solid archer fighter with just the Weapon Master's Handbook, the ACG (for Mutation Warrior), and whatever books the archery feats are in. If I could have another option, I'd want Warrior Spirit from the MTT. But in this example, do I have to count the books the APG (for Mutagen) and Ultimate Magic (for the Wings Discovery)?

It seems to me by this standard everything (except, like, the Kineticist) is going to need a half-dozen books to shine.


The Thing From Another World wrote:

Versatile Training and Adaptable training while good require one two different sourcebooks when I can get the same with the Cavalier as is in the class. To me it's not a ringing endorsement of a class that requires splat books to be useful. To get all the new fighter options requires four sourcebooks.

-Armored Masters Handbook
-Weapon Masters Handbook
-Ranged Tactcis toolbox
-Melee Tactics toolbox

It's a decent cash investment to a class that should have had that in the core book from day one.

Are these even Paizo products? I can't see them available for purchase.

Paizo Employee Design Manager

PossibleCabbage wrote:

The thing I'm not clear on about this "you've got to own a lot of books" argument is I'm not sure how to do the accounting on the "books you need" thing. For example, a lot of spellcasters are based on how good their spells are, and spells are spread over a hundred books. Blade Tutor's Spirit is amazing on a Magus, but are we considering "Melee Tactics Handbook" as a must-have book for the Magus?

Like I'm pretty sure I can build a solid archer fighter with just the Weapon Master's Handbook, the ACG (for Mutation Warrior), and whatever books the archery feats are in. If I could have another option, I'd want Warrior Spirit from the MTT. But in this example, do I have to count the books the APG (for Mutagen) and Ultimate Magic (for the Wings Discovery)?

It seems to me by this standard everything (except, like, the Kineticist) is going to need a half-dozen books to shine.

The majority of the best spells are right in the CRB. You only "need" an additional book if the options are so much better than what's available in core that they change the performance of the class. There's no way to build one of these high skill, good Will, party-buffing Fighters without half a dozen books, but you can build a god or batman wizard using just the CRB. Similarly you can build an effective Rogue with just Unchained and the CRB. There's a difference between having support in lots of books and needing lots of books to just perform at par with the bulk of other classes.

Just to compare to the performance of a Magus using nothing but Ultimate Magic and the CRB, or a Slayer using the ACG and CRB, or a Monk using Unchained and the CRB, (and so on) the Fighter needs multiple other books.

Malignor wrote:
The Thing From Another World wrote:

Versatile Training and Adaptable training while good require one two different sourcebooks when I can get the same with the Cavalier as is in the class. To me it's not a ringing endorsement of a class that requires splat books to be useful. To get all the new fighter options requires four sourcebooks.

-Armored Masters Handbook
-Weapon Masters Handbook
-Ranged Tactcis toolbox
-Melee Tactics toolbox

It's a decent cash investment to a class that should have had that in the core book from day one.

Are these even Paizo products? I can't see them available for purchase.

They're all softcovers-

Armor Master's Handbook
Weapon Master's Handbook
Ranged Tactics Toolbox
Melee Tactics Toolbox

The Exchange

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Malignor wrote:
The Thing From Another World wrote:

Versatile Training and Adaptable training while good require one two different sourcebooks when I can get the same with the Cavalier as is in the class. To me it's not a ringing endorsement of a class that requires splat books to be useful. To get all the new fighter options requires four sourcebooks.

-Armored Masters Handbook
-Weapon Masters Handbook
-Ranged Tactcis toolbox
-Melee Tactics toolbox

It's a decent cash investment to a class that should have had that in the core book from day one.

Are these even Paizo products? I can't see them available for purchase.

This points to what Ssalarn and I were discussing up thread.

There are places on the interwebs where you can freely access material for this game without ever buying a book. The plethora of options is staggering, and unbalanced. Especially when 3pp stuff starts getting used, or stuff that's limited by fluff that isn't presented online.

There's two sides to this - firstly the fact that it's freely accessible makes this entire argument about "how many splat books to be viable" completely moot. The stuff is just there to be used by anyone with internet access ( so everyone in this thread)
- secondly, any source that isn't Paizo is subject to suspicion, because it hasn't gone through the conceptual balance process they use when making their material "freely available". The rules supplied in the PRD are designed with a different philosophy to the ones released in the various campaign books. They shouldn't be intermingled ad hoc without consideration of the setting requirements they were initially published with.

Paizo Employee Design Manager

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Wrath wrote:
Malignor wrote:
The Thing From Another World wrote:

Versatile Training and Adaptable training while good require one two different sourcebooks when I can get the same with the Cavalier as is in the class. To me it's not a ringing endorsement of a class that requires splat books to be useful. To get all the new fighter options requires four sourcebooks.

-Armored Masters Handbook
-Weapon Masters Handbook
-Ranged Tactcis toolbox
-Melee Tactics toolbox

It's a decent cash investment to a class that should have had that in the core book from day one.

Are these even Paizo products? I can't see them available for purchase.

This points to what Ssalarn and I were discussing up thread.

There are places on the interwebs where you can freely access material for this game without ever buying a book. The plethora of options is staggering, and unbalanced. Especially when 3pp stuff starts getting used, or stuff that's limited by fluff that isn't presented online.

There's two sides to this - firstly the fact that it's freely accessible makes this entire argument about "how many splat books to be viable" completely moot. The stuff is just there to be used by anyone with internet access ( so everyone in this thread)
- secondly, any source that isn't Paizo is subject to suspicion, because it hasn't gone through the conceptual balance process they use when making their material "freely available". The rules supplied in the PRD are designed with a different philosophy to the ones released in the various campaign books. They shouldn't be intermingled ad hoc without consideration of the setting requirements they were initially published with.

To elaborate on that a bit, there's issues with anything that's not on the PRD. D20PFSRD is not allowed to include Golarion specific content, so they frequently change feats and options into more generic and abusable forms. Feats that are "must worship Gorum" in the official book become "must worship a war deity" and suddenly there's this huge new possibility for finding deities that are both war deities and have access to domains or options that Gorum does not. Archives of Nethys is technically still in Beta and has a tendency to update slowly while also being a little less easy to navigate (or find in the first place).

So while it's easy to say that splatbooks are available on the internet, you have to know where to look first, and then even when you do find them there's no guarantee that what you're looking at is even accurate to the source material.
If Paizo hosted their splatbooks on the PRD I'd withdraw the objection entirely, but since they don't it remains a lingering issue.
Beyond all that, how does a player even know to look for these options to begin with? Someone who's never heard of these books isn't going to realize that they even exist, let alone their necessity. Who's even going to think to look in Ultimate Intrigue for bravery feats? They were shoehorned in there to make sure the Fighter got something but it's not exactly an intuitive placement. How is someone going to know that the Weapon Master's Handbook is where the Fighter needs to go to be better at skills?


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Has anybody talked about the Seasoned Commander Fighter archetype yet? Not only does the fighter get more class skills (two face skills and some knowledge skills) and skill ranks (up to 4+), but he also gets the Cavalier's Tactician abilities and the Bard's, of all classes, Inspiration abilities. This does not cost him any feats, meaning he gets even more feats than a regular fighter does. He loses out on flat bonuses to attack and damage and armor related stuff, but now he's more of a team player. His inspiration abilities are charisma based though, but now he has more skills to use it with.


Frosty Ace wrote:
Rhedyn wrote:
Frosty Ace wrote:

Half-Elf Fighter.

Stats: 14,16(+2),12, 12, 13

Feats:

Lvl1: Weapon Finesse, Power Attack
Lvl2: Improved Bravery
Lvl3: Courage in a Bottle
Lvl4: Unhindering Shield
Lvl5: Trained Grace
Lvl6: Inspiring Bravery
Lvl7: Weapon Focus
Lvl8: Greater Weapon Focus
Lvl9: Armor Specialization, Warrior Spirit

Use an Elven Curved Blade, boost dex, let the static damage do it's work and have fun with all around good saves/aura against mind-affecting. (Touch) AC is really, really good, initiative will be top notch, and you could forgo warrior spirit for even better switch hitting with archery.

Edit: You could also just be human with EWP for the skill point and change stats a bit for some chr to be a back up face.

Which claim are you trying to make? What conditions are you comparing yourself to the cavalier? No mount, No Challenge, Mount and Challenge, just mount, or just total party contribution?

Also what does this build look like out to 20? I've been pretty content with fighter's 1-9. It's after than that things start sucking for me.

? You were saying one can't make a build with all these great Fighter options. Here's a Fighter with good saves, buffs the party, great damage, good switch hitting possibilities, hella defense, decent skill points off the bat, and anything after level 5 is subject to change depending on what you want, since all the aforementioned scales with level and stat boosts. It actually serves to the point that you don't need to pigeonhole a Fighter build to be durable and effective.

You say past 9 it will start to suck, but why is that? It's saves, defense and offense all scale incredibly well as the levels increase. At 10 alone it is immune to fear when intoxicated. Hell what I posted wasn't even made to be optimal or anything. It's really just working off of Fighter class features, something I thought of in about 5 minutes, but is still likely to be effective.

OK. Fighter vs Cavalier in General Party Contribution

+Will Save
+Will Save bonus aura
+Ref
-Con (lower base constitution and you can't afford to pump it with items at the moment)
-Skills (I do not see anything here that actually boost skills)
-Damage (You do have warrior spirit as a plus. You are dex focused with some strength on the side. You may out pace a strength based sword and board warrior. Even though you double and 1.5 your strength mod to x3, that leaves you pursuing both stats to have good to-hit and damage. I don't understand the damage claim here)
+AC (All AC, since I see nothing that Prevents you from wearing heavy Armor and still get +6 dex mod in mithral with a shield on top)
-Sharing teamwork feats
-A large size strong flying mount for both battle and exploration difficulties
-Battle field control (Order specific cavalier ability)

Conclusion: Your aura is good team support and you are tanky-er, but you lack reason to not be ignored, reducing the benefit of being tanky-er. You lack high strength which I find useful to the party outside of combat. Your dex is high, but I do not see you being the skill monkey or even good at any dex skill that you would use.
The reason I asked builds because it demonstrates that you can do the one thing (will save aura) that you talked about, but basically nothing else after grabbing options to make yourself competitive in general combat numbers.

Paizo Employee Design Manager

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Reduxist wrote:
Has anybody talked about the Seasoned Commander Fighter archetype yet? Not only does the fighter get more class skills (two face skills and some knowledge skills) and skill ranks (up to 4+), but he also gets the Cavalier's Tactician abilities and the Bard's, of all classes, Inspiration abilities. This does not cost him any feats, meaning he gets even more feats than a regular fighter does. He loses out on flat bonuses to attack and damage and armor related stuff, but now he's more of a team player. His inspiration abilities are charisma based though, but now he has more skills to use it with.

It costs him his heavy armor proficiency, tower shield proficiency (which is like, whatever, no big deal), his 1st level bonus feat, and the entirety of his weapon and armor training class features, which are pretty big trades.

It also inherits some unfortunate issues in the class features it borrows; it only gets the one 1st level feat for Tactician for 10 levels and has to share the feat as a standard action without the action economy bonuses of a mount to soften the blow. It's also fighting with Inspiring Speech until 7th level.

Inspiring Speech/Greatness/Heroics are also nowhere near as good as the bard options; the Fighter has exactly one use at levels 1-9 so he's only using it for a single combat a day, and it never goes up above 3 uses at level 15. His Greatness and Heroics options are also much more limited in the number of allies they can benefit.

It's not terrible, especially if you don't have access to the Armor Master's and/or Weapon Master's Handbooks, but it's far from ideal. Biggest selling points are the 2 extra feats and the extra skills and skill points, but you're paying a lot for them.


To the Source Book Debate:

I am of two minds on the issue

1. I would never limit MARTIALS on paizo source material. I do think the cavalier is categorically worse without monstrous mount and that is a splat book feat chain (two feats). Without everything that a flying mount grants a martial in terms of flexibility, I really wouldn't be considering the class without it. The GM maybe allowing flying mounts or maybe getting you some sweet magic item for your horse or the casters having to waste spells are all variable things that I have seen not work out in play. Sometimes the casters are too busy with their problems to cast fly on you and sometimes the GM isn't handing out fly potions like candy.

2. A large inspiration for this thread is that I was mad about how easily you can put together a Cavalier that overshadows the most meticulously built fighter using every splat book possible. I've spent countless hours trying to make a viable 1-20 fighter build that levels well both in pathfinder and 3.5. It just isn't happening. I am sympathetic to the source-book complaint. No other class requiring this amount of effort does resonate with me even if I do not think the source-book complaint is a great criticism when trying to compare optimal potential of a class.


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Ehhhh splat books...

I have a hard time justifying anything that's not already available here on the Paizo PRD simply because of ready access to the player group. For example the Halfling Order of the Paw is in the PRD, so it's available to everyone whether they bought the book or not. Any GM can review it, any player can build it and reference it. It's freely available, it's publicly available, it's official Paizo content made available by Paizo. It's not restricted to people who paid for it, either. It's "free to play" material and so I don't consider that a "splat book", I consider it 100% legit.

I say this even though I've thrown quite a bit of money at Paizo for stuff I don't even use in any game >_<
(well, until it gets published to the PRD, then I'm all-in)
But I buy Paizo because I want to support a company whose products and corporate attitude are worth supporting. The fact that they have the PRD up there is the reason I keep buying their stuff... because after using the new PRD content, and enjoying it, I feel I should pay for it.


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Rhedyn wrote:
Snip

Eh, the damage mainly comes from power attack and Trained Grace. They together give (With Golves of Dueling) +15 on every attack. Again, I just haphazardly all this together. Honestly, a Learned Duelist would be a much more devastating Dex build. The build could also be strength based by just switching two stats.

15(+2), 13, 14, 12, 10, 13.

Same feats generally. Toughness, Weapon Focus and Power Attack on a human at level 1. With a skill point per level, that's 5 until lvl 5, where it can become seven. The biggest drwback is lower ac, but if need be, you could just rock a heavy shield with long sword until Unhindering Shield.

Just as well, you've kinda put in summary why your initial point is wrong. Barring damage, which I didn't even optimize and most certainly anyone else in here can do better than me, the two classes equal out. Enough to where it's not this irrefutable truth that the Fighter is worse than a Cavalier. It just takes more work to maximize, and thankfully we've hit a point where that maximization is rewarding.


Frosty Ace wrote:
Just as well, you've kinda put in summary why your initial point is wrong.

I would not draw that conclusion. I broke it down point by point, but I feel general party contribution goes to the Cavalier in comparison here.

My claim is not the the Cavalier is just Fighter+ (like many rogue replacements). My claim is that the Cavalier is generally more useful in all aspects of the game. Hence "Just Better".


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Ryan Freire wrote:


If you're not down with splatbooks you have to come to the conclusion that the power level of bad classes is just fixed.

Or even worse it highlights even more how weaker a class is imo. I can use the Cavalier straight out of the book. The only weakness and not muc of one is the mount. With all due respect needing system mastery, having to read and purchase at least four splatbooks it maybe a fix it's not the best or even a good fix to me at least. Or to put it another way a a person wants to sell two homes. Home A has working plumbing. Home B does not. No wants to buy Home B and the seller gets angry and tell potential sellers that a lack of plumbing is not a issue because one can go out and buy new plumbing for Home B. Guess what buyers still will not buy Home B.

Ryan Freire wrote:


Monk and rogue will always be terrible. Splatbooks are HOW you fix underpowered classes.

A splatbook yes. Multiple Splatbooks no. The Unchained rogue and Monk are found in one book. Telling a interested player that the Fighter as a class works if they know system mastery and worse require buying four books is not going to make them want to buy those books. Nor want to play a Fighter. Even with the free SRD one is essentially telling a player to look through all those rules online. Good luck.


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The Thing From Another World wrote:


A splatbook yes. Multiple Splatbooks no. The Unchained rogue and Monk are found in one book. Telling a interested player that the Fighter as a class works if they know system mastery and worse require buying four books is not going to make them want to buy those books. Nor want to play a Fighter.

Based on what, zero classes being successfully fixed by a single splatbook and any book collating splatbook options into a single source being terribly recieved by the playerbase? Literally all cavalier can do in its base book is be a mounted combatant, and primarily a lance based mounted combatant.

PFSRD is a thing, it lists whether options are third party, Archives of Nethys is a thing, it keeps the golarion flavor on all of the feats. Acting like these are not solutions (and good ones, they're free, and id bet most if not all the pathfinder playing public has access to the internet at this point either via computer or phone) is like being thrown a rope when you fall off a ship and then refusing to help pull yourself back in.


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I feel like the issue with splatbooks is that "reading through lists on some SRD" is not the best way to discover things that are useful to your character, which is something I absolutely agree with. Reading an actual book or even a PDF is a better way to discover spells or feats because it puts them in a context where you have appropriate space to digest them as they're with a handful of their kin rather than hundreds.

But the thing is, we have to consider who the audience of this thread is. Here on the forums, no matter how obscure some spell, feat, or item is there's probably someone on the forum who is enthusastic enough about it to recommend it to anybody who asks; we have an advice forum for a reason.

The Cavalier is absolutely an easier class to build to be effective than the fighter is, absolutely. But almost every class is easier to build to be effective than the fighter; fighter's one of the most complex classes to build honestly. So if I'm talking to a less experienced player, or someone who wants something simple I'm not going to recommend a fighter. But for some people the intricacy of building a good fighter is part of the draw- with all those feats you can have a lot of moving parts.

But the long and short of it is that the Cavalier being simpler or easier to build than the Fighter doesn't make it better than the Fighter. The Cavalier potentially having higher numbers in an ideal situation doesn't make it better than the Fighter. Likewise the Fighter being harder to render ineffective doesn't make it better than the Cavalier, nor does the Fighter's versatility make it better than the Cavalier.

The Exchange

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This whole concept of "fixed a class" is so obtuse. The usefulness of a class comes down to soooooo many variables at a table as to be a non measurable entity.

People try it by doing these pointless in vacuum builds and tests and honestly they have no relevance to the game outside the very narrow vacuum they're run in.

Occasionally, and I mean very rarely now days, something gets pointed out as a flaw. It's generally an issue with rules as written compared to what the intent is. Rogues suffered from this horribly with sneak attack requiring stealth which required conditions that actually prevented sneak attack.

You guys are talking about how fighters are only useful now that these armour/weapon splat books have come out. That's just wrong. These arguments have raged on these forums since Paizo still published Dungeon magazine for 3.5 DnD. All the way through those arguments people have been able to build useful, fun and effective fighters and other classes, even without the myriad splat books now available.

Again I'll point to a discussion that Ssalarn and I had a little earlier in this thread. Our entire take on which class is better or not comes from personal table experience. We both appear to be very experienced players and DMs, having run many games for many years with multitudes of players (multitude may be a slight exaggeration, but it's better than lots).

Our experiences are almost polar opposites for Cavaliers. It's the same with so many other players with all classes.

So, you get challenged with "just because you don't see a problem, doesn't mean it doesn't exist", which is countered by "just because you have an issue with something, doesn't make it valid to the rest of us".

Then you get folks saying "we must use builds and compare in a vacuum" which is just useless data because all those results invariably fail in situ.

And just like this thread, the goal posts get shifted all the time in order to try and "win" the argument.


Wrath wrote:
You guys are talking about how fighters are only useful now that these armor/weapon splat books have come out. That's just wrong. These arguments have raged on these forums since Paizo still published Dungeon magazine for 3.5 DnD. All the way through those arguments people have been able to build useful, fun and effective fighters and other classes, even without the myriad splat books now available.

Can you actually show that build or are you just going to keep saying people aren't discussing correctly because they don't agree with you?

You can claim "builds" are meaningless, but that is just a cop-out. Some of us actually play these builds out and remember what we needed when.


God I hope it's a better fighter.

To clarify, one member of my team swapped from Magus to Cavalier. Some sort of Drake version. From my own searches people seem split on Cavalier but also tend tend to just dump on the Drake version. So I'd be a little ticked if he swapped to a weaker class.

That might sound petty but he left me as sole spell caster now. Not happy but that's off topic. If Cavalier is pretty good/solid now maybe I'll be happier that he's happy about the change.


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Rhedyn wrote:
My claim is not the the Cavalier is just Fighter+ (like many rogue replacements). My claim is that the Cavalier is generally more useful in all aspects of the game. Hence "Just Better".

I guess it then becomes a question of what defines usefulness. Sharing teamwork feats and the general benefits of orders are an amazing boon in battle, but it'd be silly to just say they're always flat out better than anything a Fighter can provide in any scenario, especially when considering archetypes. There's also a point to be made about the abundance of viable build variety a Fighter has. From a brave little slinging Halfling, a basic two handed brute with a surprising level of mental fortitude and charisma, to an intelligence based Elf. It's also because of said variety that a blanket statement of "Cavalier>Fighter" is not only hard to accept, but prove.


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"Fixed" in terms of fighter has never been about damage, which they do just fine. Its about being able to have a niche in a party outside of combat, or ability to do other things in combat to help which takes a little work.

They required help to have the skills to socially participate in a way that isnt going to make the party more enemies than friends and the cunning feat and versatile training/adaptive training helped there by providing them the class skills and skill ranks to play on that field. Its not the same as a Cha focused class like bard or paladin being the face but its personally functional.

They required help to have actions to take beyond "I move up/charge and attack, or I full attack" in combat. Archetypes like lorewarden helped there, bypassing an awful stat and feat requirement to use maneuvers and use them effectively.

They required help to NOT be more of a liability than help to the party once things like dominates and charms become CR appropriate so Armed bravery/Improved bravery(or whatever that feat is) came around to give them a fighting chance against will saves.

The fighter has never needed "fixing" to go out and deal damage, they needed fixing to be more than just damage and standard/full attacks mechanically. These splatbooks push them into parity with the 4 level casting martials and near parity with some of the 6 level classes. They emphasize their roles as masters of weapons and armor with more than static bonuses and turn them into an interesting class that can fight effectively with weapons other classes really cant, and take full advantage of their armor as more than just ac (a weakish defense by mid level) prior to level 19.


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MerlinCross wrote:

God I hope it's a better fighter.

To clarify, one member of my team swapped from Magus to Cavalier. Some sort of Drake version. From my own searches people seem split on Cavalier but also tend tend to just dump on the Drake version. So I'd be a little ticked if he swapped to a weaker class.

That might sound petty but he left me as sole spell caster now. Not happy but that's off topic. If Cavalier is pretty good/solid now maybe I'll be happier that he's happy about the change.

I have so many rules questions about that archetype. But it basically guts the Cavalier. He probably won't even be able to ride his mount and lost many of his good abilities for something that does not look to be stronger than a basic animal companion.

You can build a bad magus, but even a good cavalier would have problems bringing as much as a well ran magus can bring. A Good cavalier will do more than a magus who doesn't know what he is doing. I've seen magi just die and not really do anything when they are played like brutes.


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Ssalarn wrote:
Ryan Freire wrote:
The Thing From Another World wrote:

Versatile Training and Adaptable training while good require one two different sourcebooks when I can get the same with the Cavalier as is in the class. To me it's not a ringing endorsement of a class that requires splat books to be useful. To get all the new fighter options requires four sourcebooks.

-Armored Masters Handbook
-Weapon Masters Handbook
-Ranged Tactcis toolbox
-Melee Tactics toolbox

It's a decent cash investment to a class that should have had that in the core book from day one.

I'm sorry but that isn't much of a compelling argument. If you're not down with splatbooks you have to come to the conclusion that the power level of bad classes is just fixed. Monk and rogue will always be terrible. Splatbooks are HOW you fix underpowered classes.
Monk and Rogue got fixed with 1 book. Fighter took 6. The Monk and Rogue fixes were also in a single hardcover, not scattered around between a handful of softbacks and randomly wedged into a hardcover that otherwise has nothing to do with the options being presented.

That's not even mentioning that the best fighter fix, the lore warden archetype, got nerfed. Apparently, being good at more than 1 combat maneuver is overpowered or something.


Ryan Freire wrote:


Based on what, zero classes being successfully fixed by a single splatbook and any book collating splatbook options into a single source being terribly recieved by the playerbase? Literally all cavalier can do in its base book is be a mounted combatant, and primarily a lance based mounted combatant.

Let's see the get many of the social based skills like Bluff and Diplomacy. With enough skill points to actually be able to take most of their skills. They have their challenge ability, they get some extra stuff from their orders. Tactician, Greater and Master Version at later levels. As well as Challenge and their Banner class features. Sure they can't do anything else but be a mounted combatant. Either you have not read the class imo or simply downplaying the above to try and prove your point. Zero classes have been fixed with a single book. Monk and Rogue fixed in Pathfinder Unchained funny enough in one book.

I have yet to see fans complaining about collecting material into a single book. If it's reprint advertised as new then yes. Putting all the material into one convenient book as opposed to four seperate books that cost more than a single book. Sorry but only those who want to complain will complain about that. Usually it's not because they combined the material it's complaints about more bloat.

Ryan Freire wrote:


PFSRD is a thing, it lists whether options are third party, Archives of Nethys is a thing, it keeps the golarion flavor on all of the feats. Acting like these are not solutions (and good ones, they're free, and id bet most if not all the pathfinder playing public has access to the internet at this point either via computer or phone) is like being thrown a rope when you fall off a ship and then refusing to help pull yourself back in.

I never said it was not useful It's a resource that I don't use. Sorry but I have VASTLY more important things to do then pour through the SRD. I usually use the Pathfinder character build guides or ask help from friends or start a thread here.

Ventnor wrote:
That's not even mentioning that the best fighter fix, the lore warden archetype, got nerfed. Apparently, being good at more than 1 combat maneuver is overpowered or something.

I'm not too happy with that Nerf. It's not something I would take as a Archetype. Yet I really did not see anything that really required nerfing imo. Espcecially when their are other options that require nerfing.

The Exchange

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Rhedyn wrote:
Wrath wrote:
You guys are talking about how fighters are only useful now that these armor/weapon splat books have come out. That's just wrong. These arguments have raged on these forums since Paizo still published Dungeon magazine for 3.5 DnD. All the way through those arguments people have been able to build useful, fun and effective fighters and other classes, even without the myriad splat books now available.

Can you actually show that build or are you just going to keep saying people aren't discussing correctly because they don't agree with you?

You can claim "builds" are meaningless, but that is just a cop-out. Some of us actually play these builds out and remember what we needed when.

Do a search for any one of a hundred martial/caster disparity threads and find them yourself. It's been done ad Infinitum. I honestly don't need to bother with it myself.

As for playing out a build, I always laugh at that too. But then my campaigns have always had moments of "wow, this is a whole new tangent, now I have to adapt" so a "build" has never really been something we do.

The closest we've come to a build is "I might need some of this feat chain for this part of the campaign"

But, seems lots of the generation of gamers now are all about the optimal build. I've watched more than a few of them get bent out of shape when the game they're in doesn't suit their build for a few sessions.

Pretty sure I pointed out earlier why I prefer fighters. I like the flexibility they provide for their builds.

Now, since you're so hard on builds the,selves. You still haven't built three cavaliers that are significantly different so playing them in three campaigns isn't just boring.

The Exchange

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Ryan, possibly.

Fighters always had intimidate. It's a social skill, and one I think is pretty poorly used. Too many DMs said you made enemies because you intimidate them. Really, intimidate works as much from the fact that people are likely to go along with what you say because of your air of authority and general don't mess with me demeanour. Police have this effect all the time, just from driving down the road and walking in crowds. (At least they do here in Australia, I can't speak for other countries.) Intimidate is a way to measure level of respect born of fear of consequence, not just "god I hate that guy he's such a bully"

They also access to knowledge, engineering, another aspect completely underused in games ( opens up a whole new experience when the fighter is looking at ways to collapse parts of dungeons on enemies to deny flanks or using engineering to reduce mundane trap DC through explanation of the mechanics needed to make it work).

However, both of those points require DMing interpretation I don't see used very often. Most DMs I see say "you tried to scare them, now they hate you!"

Manoeuvres were always more a problem with mechanics as a whole, not the class specifically. Prior to Pathfinder, a 3.5 train tripping fighter was the cause of terror in many games. Pathfinder changed things mechanically to prevent that but it turns out it just made sooooo many things in combat too damn ineffective, compared to "I hit it with my axe"

Dominate etc is a non issue. It's a known weakness for many classes. Some classes have the ability to cast a spell to protect them, assuming they have it prepared. Fighters just made sure they acquired the magic item necessary to do it.

The ioun stone with Pathfinder compass combination came out in Pathfinders first year. Immune to mind effects thanks to permanent protection from evil thanks to that little gem.

It's available to everyone, and it really did make those dominate situations non relevant. Assuming you play in golarion.

However, I agree that they've become even more exciting as a class. That's because their big class bonus is a huge number of feats. It means they just get better in terms of build flexibility with nearly every splat book released. Same way casters do due to spells.

My biggest issue with the fighter class is the sheer quantity of feats now days leads to,the same type of choice paralysis I see in casters. Fighters almost need a character building program in order to get your head around what you have to choose from. Luckily there are many of those, and also many sites where feats have been organised by their role not just their name and ability.


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The Thing From Another World wrote:


I never said it was not useful It's a resource that I don't use. Sorry but I have VASTLY more important things to do then pour through the SRD. I usually use the Pathfinder character build guides or ask...

The complaints and problems of people with a solution sitting right in front of them aren't worth much.

Grand Lodge

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Rheydon, you realize tha it's rediculous to ask us to make a full build for our point every time when you're not making a full build for your point every time, right?

Anyways, to talk about having more utility out of combat, the Fighter matches up to the cavalier there as well. With Versatile Training a fighter can substitute his BAB for 2 skills, effectively giving him 4 skillpoints a level. There's also Fighter's Tactics, which lets the Fighter count his allies as having his teamwork feats. Oh and would you look at that? They also have Armed Bravery to make their bravery apply to all will saves and makes him harder to intimidate.

It's also easy to pick up pretty much any skill as a class skill using traits. But let's say you don't use traits. Now let's also factor in that the Fighter gets 2 knowledge skills as class skills while the cavalier gets none (except with specific orders), survival as a class skill, and craft as a class skill. And with Master Craftsman the fighter can even be the weaponsmith for the entire party, upgrading their magic weapons and such.

The fighter has plenty of out of combat utility, saying that the cavalier has more just seems weird to me.


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Why do you keep doing this to yourself, Vrog ol' boy.

Why do these threads keep popping up? Seriously, does someone have a calendar somewhere that has an alarm set for "Hey, it's time to start another 'Fighters Suck!' thread. It'll be great, and no one has made one before!"

Seriously, MONKS, FIGHTERS, AND ROGUES DO NOT SUCK.

I realize that this is the internet and all, but if all you have to say in a discussion about a class is that one of the above classes suck, especially compared to X/Y/Z, you really have nothing to say on the conversation that hasn't been said ad nauseum.

If you feel that Cavaliers (or wizards, or brawlers, or what have you) are better than Fighters, that's great, but your opinion, backed up with a "build" (followed predictably by "Here is my math; it's not optimized, but I'm prepared to nitpick yours to death" argument) also do not add to the conversation.

Instead of saying things like "FIGTERS SUX LOLZ, CAUSE THIS CLASS IS BETTERS!", why not just focus on what you think is great about a class?

Vitriol solves nothing (I'll grant that the above can count as vitriol, but seriously, I'm tired of these arguments over and over again. Not debates, mind, but arguments. It's just silly.)


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Anytime anyone says something sucks, everyone else is going to start defending it. I mean reading this, I've started to find myself dissing the cavalier, and I actually like the class. I'm just starting to get touchy because I like fighters and it seems like they're under attack, and then everyone defends and refutes, and it snowballs since we don't understand the digital medium... Etc.

I'll just settle for cavalier is more user friendly. Better is entirely dependent on who makes it. As we can see through many people forming their builds, there is a lot of variety, and you just can't attribute that to the choice of class.

I mean a good optimizer could pull off a better warrior in comparison to another poorly built character. Goodness, my first character was a wizard and I had no idea what I was doing!*

*Said character had a 10 constitution AND 10 dexterity. Yeah.


Wrath wrote:

T

You guys are talking about how fighters are only useful now that these armour/weapon splat books have come out. That's just wrong. These arguments have raged on these forums since Paizo still published Dungeon magazine for 3.5 DnD. All the way through those arguments people have been able to build useful, fun and effective fighters and other classes, even without the myriad splat books now available.

Fighters have always been useful. Just with those two splatbooks they have also become versatile. A good tanky fighter with proper spell support works even in core. But he only does one thing- quite well.

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