@Malwing: I don't feel these posts are an exercise in insanity. They're an opportunity to: verify if I am understanding the rules correctly; and how to home-brew things that don't work for me and my table.
I disagree, mostly because that's not whats normally going on. Otherwise we'd be in the House Rules subforums. A number of us have done so. I have my own ongoing project. There are things like individual feats to and things like that where we can complain about and ask for change but we're on these threads going as far as wanting martials to get encounter bypassing abilities equal to flying and teleporting.
I can agree with this. I feel like some of the things that people want are leaving D&D, which is what Pathfinder is, behind. A lot of people want to bring martials up, and I can agree with that to an extent, but it seems like very few want to bring casters down.
I think that's where the problem lies. Magic has always been powerful at higher levels, but I can't remember it being anything like it is now. There were limits and checks. A lot of those are gone now. Each book causes more creep, both laterally and vertically.
I understand that this game is about wish fulfillment. We want to be badass and do amazing things, but that goal post keeps getting pushed further and further back.
I'm at work so I can't give a real in depth analysis. However, I will say what I normally do when people post fighter fixes. Just get rid of that weapon group nonsense. Imagine, if you will, a world where fighters are simply better at wielding weapons than other people. A world where fighters equip that sweet new sword the boss dropped instead of selling it because he chose maces this time around. But yeah. Weapon groups are the devil. They limit you instead of helping.
There's a lot of interesting stuff here though. I'll try and do a better post about it later.
My favorite is one that allows the Fighter to get extra bonuses from mental skills, increasing their OOC versatility thanks to more stuff they are good at.
But to address your specific concern, here's another one I've tried.
Veteran's Prowess
At 2nd level, a Fighter can choose one of the following specializations. Each one represents a skill the Fighter has picked up from his combat experience.
- Gut Feeling: In combat, one learns the true nature of people. Your experience with battle has made you able to have accurate hunches. You gain 1/2 of your fighter levels as a bonus to Sense Motive and you may use Sense Motive to feint in combat.
- Spellhunter: Perhaps you don't know any magic tricks, but you know its crucial for a mundane warrior to be prepared. You gain 1/2 of your fighter levels as a bonus to Spellcraft. If you successfully identify a spell this way, you increase the difficulty of the concentration check required to cast that spell by 2 as long as you are threatening the caster.
I like these ideas and wish to throw my own spin on them.
Spoiler:
Combat Veteran
At 2nd level a fighter chooses charisma, wisdom, or intelligence and gains class abilities based on his choice.
Intelligence:
-Brave Mind: Gain a bonus on all intelligence checks and intelligence based skill checks equal to your Bravery bonus. You can make knowledge checks untrained.
-Knew It Was Coming: Gain spellcraft as a class skill. When you use the spellcraft skill to successfully identify a spell gain a bonus equal to your intelligence modifier on your saving throw against that spell.
-Knowing Is Half The Battle: At 6th level, when you successfully identify a monster with a knowledge check, gain a bonus damage rolls equal to your intelligence modifier against that creature.
Wisdom:
-Brave Insight: Gain a bonus on all wisdom checks and wisdom based skill checks equal to your Bravery bonus.
-Go With Your Gut: Gain sense motive as a class skill. You can use sense motive in place of bluff to make feint checks in combat. Gain a bonus equal to your wisdom modifier on hit and damage against opponents you have successfully feinted in combat.
-Quick Feint: At 6th level you can now feint as a move action.
Charisma:
-Brave Personality: Gain a bonus on all charisma checks and charisma based skill checks equal to your Bravery bonus.
-Disarming Grin: Gain diplomacy as a class skill. You can intimidate an opponent as a swift action.
-Willful Warrior: Gain a bonus equal to your charisma modifier on all saves against spells of the enchantment school.
-Press the Advantage: At 6th level, gain a bonus equal to your charisma modifier on hit and damage rolls against a target your have successfully intimidated.
These ideas do make a fighter more MAD, but I added the bonuses here and there to their combat abilities to offset that. I'm certain they need some better balancing and adjustments, but I do like the basic idea behind them. All the best 'fighter' types from stories and movies have quirks about them that they use to their advantage.
@gunsmith paladin-- yes, its very off topic. Regardless, I refuse to accept that any race of sentient creatures would act willfully and conspicuously against survival. I simply cannot abide by running goblins or kobolds or any race like they are video game monsters incapable of thought as a race.
I don't play a lot in published campaign settings, admittedly, but I think that if the goblins in them are truly as ill equipped for survival in these campaign settings, then I would suspect they would all be like the Dark Sun goblins by this point.
** spoiler omitted **
If I remember right in some of the monster manuals for older editions they basically stated that the only reason goblins haven't been wiped out is the fact that they breed like cockroaches and mature quickly.
Also, how is standing side by side acting willfully and conspicuously against survival? Hell, it's downright beneficial from time to time. How else are you going to use aid another?
This reminds me of my first DM from all those years ago. Everyone you ran into was the same guy. Sure they looked different, but they all had that same jerk personality. And it didn't matter if they were a farmer in a field, or a merchant on the street, if you got into a fight with them suddenly they were master swordsmen and genius tacticians.
Years later I know better. Sometimes a farmer standing in a field is just that. A farmer in his field. He doesn't know how to fight. He doesn't understand complicated battle plans. He only really knows how to tend his farm.
My point being is that not everything or everyone in the world is combat trained. They might know how to stab someone with a sharp stick, but so does a 5-year-old.
Have you thought about using a fighter? It deals anywhere from 1d3 to 2d6 damage. It can used to trip, disarm, grapple, or any maneuver really. It can even come with reach. And the best part is that you don't even have to wield it. Just point at something and it'll do all the dirty work.
On a more serious note have you considered using a net? Even without proficiency it's a ranged touch attack and can really hamper a lot of opponents. I figured I'd suggest something a little different since everyone else got the basics.
Oh, and don't forget summon spells. All kinds of good stuff there to smack enemies with.
Grenades have existed for thousands of years? Maybe 1200-1300 or so, if you count Greek Fire grenades. And how long exactly has magic existed on Golarion (or most other campaign worlds)? Hint: It's usually measured in MULTIPLE thousands of years, if not more. I'd wager that goblins on Golarion have been dealing with mages throwing blast spells at them for far FAR longer than humans have been dealing with grenades.
I was actually talking about how tactics themselves evolve not just that one specific tactic. It strikes me as odd that goblins would have the discipline to create such tactics over any stretch of time.
Which brings me to the question: What kind of campaigns do you all play where goblins are such pinnacles of success? They have training, tactics, and enough advanced knowledge of arcane magic to identify it on sight (or even before it's cast). I only know of one official campaign setting where goblins and their ilk were more than simple savages and that was Eberron (and that was thousands of years into Eberron's past). Everywhere else, that I've seen at least, they are sniveling, craven, superstitious, lazy, and primitive.
However, I feel that we're really getting off topic on this. We're literally arguing over the might of goblins.
1st level Wizard isn't more powerful than 1st level Barbarian or Ranger or Fighter by any stretch of the imagination, so assertions that "at 1st level Wizard is the MVP" are really off base and stretch the credulity of the source.
It seems to me that you equate party MVP with the guy who's dealing the most damage or taking the most hits. It's much more complicated than that. A well placed spell can turn the tide.
You also seem to meta game really, really hard. You also sandbox everything. You have low level, and notably dumb I might add, creatures use advanced tactics. Your argument that those are 'basic' military tactics is a bit of misnomer. Those tactics are trained skills and that training has evolved over tens, hundreds or even thousands of years. So I assume goblins in your campaigns do military drills every day? In between trying to build houses out of mud and trying to catch and eat rats I assume.
Why not just drop weapon groups completely? I've been preaching this for a while but it tends to fall on deaf ears. Just let fighters gain that bonus when they attack. Would it truly be so bad?
I'm guessing your other players are not optimized in the least. Monks are amongst the weakest of classes. Especially in a 15 point buy simply because of how MAD they are. I'm also left to wonder why you've posted in the suggestions/house rules/homebrew forum.
Just a small note on the Tooth and Claw alternate racial. I would suggest calling it Tooth or Claw as Tooth and Claw implies that you would get both. Unless that's what you were going for and then the ability isn't balanced. Not that trading a 1 RP ability (skill training) for a 2 RP ability (claws) is balanced anyway, but trading in 1 for 3 is too good.
I would recommend dropping 1 more racial point into it. It's currently at 14 points. Aasimar and Tieflings are at 15. Perhaps picking up the the Improved Natural Armor trait (1 RP) for a total of +2 natural armor?
Also, I agree about the cost of dragon typing. It's overpriced, but not crazily so. You do get two very strong immunities, low light vision, darkvision, and the fact that a lot of spells work differently when cast upon you or cast by you.
Wow this is a huge thread. I've only read a few posts from the front and back, but I think I spotted the main problem with fighters.
Almost everyone can see that the fighter has problems but everyone has different ideas on how to fix them.
true but i do think it is largly agreed 4+int for skills is desirable.
Fair enough on that. I should probably give my opinion on this though.
I personally think that the fighter's problem doesn't stem from the class itself but from the fact that the fighter's main class feature, the bonus feats, suffer from poor design choices. There's no need for improved trip and greater trip. Why don't some feats just scale? Not to mention crappy feat taxes and strange or downright absurd requirements.
I think it has to with the idea that conjuration spells also open gates to other planes of existence. Essentially you're opening a small portal to a positive energy plane and letting a little bit of that positive energy flow through to heal the target. Or at least that's how I figure it because I've always wondered the same thing.
This is something I have wondered about for a long time. Why are the feats dodge, mobility, and spring attack the prerequisites for Whirlwind Attack? They seem counter intuitive. The feat chain is about moving around and attacking but the capstone is a feat that's all about planting your feet and not moving at all.
It just seems to me to be a feat tax for the hell of it. To just slow you down from getting it and gimping the concept a little. It seems to me that Power Attack, Cleave, and Great Cleave should be the prerequisites. They fit the theme and provide better use overall. To be honest though I don't think it needs all that many prerequisites to begin with.
It feels like it's a hold over from 3.5 that didn't get fixed.
Psionicists have to pay to have the spells scale. This system doesn't. That's a huge difference.
I just have to make the comment that I literally said this in the previous paragraph. I also point out that psionicists do get free initial scaling on higher level powers (i.e. the base damage for a 9th level power is 17d6). Or least that's how it was in 3.5.
Ilja wrote:
If I were doing it, I'd make the DC something like 10 + 3 * Spell Level after metamagic adjustment. It gives around a 50/50. The extra spell point drain should probably be around twice the cost of the spell used. I'd drop unconsciousness completely, replacing it with Dazed or something. Perhaps staggered and unable to cast spells until they've rested for the 5 mins necessary to reset the nova? As is right now, it's far too random IMO.
That would make the DC for a 9th level spell 37, correct? That seems a bit high to me, but I'm not hugely familiar with saves at those levels. As far as the unconsciousness goes I don't have a huge problem with it. It's like karmic justice for all those sleep spells ruining my carefully planned encounters.
@Gunsmith Paladin: I like the "stare people into making concentration checks" thing.
Yeah, it was just something that popped into my head. Fighter's need something to help close the gap between themselves and casters. I originally thought to make it a move action to afflict someone with the shaken condition, but that wouldn't slow casters down in the least bit.
Ya know, now that I think about it, why doesn't shaken do anything really to casters? Why not just buff the shaken condition to cause casters to have to make concentration checks to cast spells? It'd help slow them down a bit and it makes sense. Your mental state is impaired, but you're still cool to bend the laws of the universe?
Being dominated if far worse than having a character die. When your character dies there's one less of your team. When you get dominated there's one less of your team and one more of theirs.
One very cool suggestion made earlier by Aelryinth(?) was a feat that adds riders or modifiers on Bravery - a feat that makes Bravery a straight bonus to Will saves instead of only vs fear would help out the fighter's traditionally atrocious will save, for instance. It'd stack with Iron Will and grant a scalable bonus that peaks at +5 on lvl 18.
At that point just give them a good will save. It's only a 1 point difference when all is said and done.
I've been trying to create something entirely new for a while just to see if I could. They're meant to exist in the campaign world that I'm working on. I'm actually kind of nervous posting it. Feedback is scary, yeah?
The class is the document in the main folder and the sub-folder contains descriptions of class abilities and class options.
The idea of the class was based around the idea of a character who uses common adventuring items such as tanglefoot bags, caltrops, and alchemist's fire. This idea evolved into a class that creates minor magical effects that mimic those items. Some of the effects are a little stronger than standard items to make them useful, and some are weaker than standard items to keep them balanced. The class is meant to be heavy on the personal customization. It also have some minor buffing abilities.
It might read a bit powerfully, but it honestly doesn't seem so. If anything it's a bit on the weak side. So far I've only had one session of real play with it at level 12. In that game there's also a paladin, a summoner, and a fighter. I was being handily outpaced by all of them. I barely contributed really. I buffed up some of the numbers, not by much though, and decided to post it here to see what anyone thought.
If there's any information missing or unclear please let me know. Since I know how it's supposed to work in my head I might have skipped over a mechanics description or something like that.
Pathfinder Society GM. 192 posts. No reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 1 Organized Play character. 
