Valrus's page

One thing I'd like to mention that no one has brought up: The Archer fighter. There is nothing restricting the fighter to melee abilities only. Sure the traditional role is front line tank, but fighters also make great archers.

It's one of the great things about the fighter, he can fill so many roles by his selection of feats. In reality all the other classes are fighters that are just more specialized. Which to me is the reason fighters lag behind. Power in D&D comes from specialization, not generalization.

I think you've pretty much hit all the nails on the head with the fighter class. Fighters have always been a favourite archtype of mine and the way they are represented in D&D is not that great, and my initial look at the Pathfinder Fighter, it looks better, but it's still just stacking on +1 bonuses, which is terribly bland in the end.

I'm glad to see they've already spiced up the feat selection a good bit which I'm quite glad for.

I've been playing a pretty much pure fighter(monk 4, fighter 13, Prc 2) in a D&D game for awhile now as well as playing them off and on since 3.0 appeared so I thought I'd share a few things I've noticed.

1) The difference between light and heavy armour is in all honesty only a point or two. Take a chain shirt for example, 4AC Max dex 4. So a high dex fighter would have 7 or 8 AC total with this armour. Full Plate, usually considered the "best" armour has an AC of 8 and max dex +1 for a total of 9 AC but also comes with a -10' speed penealty, three times the check penealty and a good deal of weight. A +3 or +4 dex mod is not hard to get. Mixing in mithril the gap widens to about 4 or 5 points for your typical fighter. It makes some difference, but unless the gap is about 5 to start, the impact on your stats is minimal.

2) Power Attack is the only method for a fighter to reliably deal more damage, which he needs in order to keep pace with casters. Some more flavourful ways would be nice. Weapon Training is decent, I like the suggestion of fighters getting a feat to up their weapon die. Something like a precision strike feat which adds an extra die when using piercing weapons would be good.

3) Fighter skills mean little, like others, upping it to 4+int mod and giving them some more choices wouldn't hurt one bit. Their current skills come up so few times, and only having 3 or 4 of them typically, that expanding this area of them would really help make fighters more interesting. Some I would add off the top of my head, Perception, Diplomacy and Heal. I would stay away from Acrobatics and Stealth skills . If you're worried about AoO, you have the feats to burn to get Dodge/Mobility.

4) more Tactical options. The combat options are decent, but are often not as desirable as the straight up attack for damage option as the OP pointed out. One area for example is terrain, allowing him to get better then normal cover for example, half cover counts as three-quarters. Being able to use the terrain to position better and move easier are other things. Terrain is very under-used in this game, the fighter could be one to fill this gap somewhat.

5) No high level feats. In power or character level. Playing a fighter and picking a feat at 18th level, I ended up going with....Lightning Reflxes and Blind-Fight. While every other classes power continues to ramp up(higher level spells, rogue abilities, greater Rage, The monks slew of abilities) the fighter's power options peter off around level 10 and next to nothing by 12th level. By this time you have nothing to shoot for, every ability is within your grasp at this point so you're not getting better at the same rate. A half dozen high level feats fighters have the best chance of getting would be great.

I think every class should play up the strengths of that class. The fighter competes with several other warrior types already, Barbarian, Rogue, Ranger, Paladin, Monk. And it's hard to make him distinct.

So for me the fighters strengths are:
Good in Armour and hard to hit, has the best chance of avoiding blows.
Best/most skilled character with a weapon.
Has potentially the most pure combat options of any class.
Is quite honestly one the most flexible classes for choosing a focus.

Things I would avoid giving the fighter:
Dex abilities, a few are decent, but the rogue/monk covers this stuff.
Protection versus magic. I know people are saying they are too vulnerable, but everyone should have some weaknesses. Every class shouldn't be able to handle everything, just as Wizards shouldn't be good in melee, a fighter should be weak against magic.
Broad sweeping bonuses, One of the charms of the fighter is that you can choose how you develop more then any other class. Straight up +to hit and damage with all weapons takes this away.

Anyhoo, this dragged out a lot more then I expected. It's a hot topic for me.