Feats and the Fighter - Design concerns

[Squirrelloid]

Over levels 1-20 the fighter gets 21 feats in beta. It sounds like an awful lot, but the relevant metric here is the number of 'tricks' the fighter is capable of.

Consider TWFing. The basic TWFing trick requires 3 feats to be viable at all levels (TWF, ITWF, GTWF). (Really, it requires a 4th, Supreme TWF, but that's not in beta/core). However, at that point you're not a very good TWFer, you need to add some enhancer feats - probably all of Double Slice, TW Rend, Vital Strike and IVS. You just spent 7(8) feats on 1 trick. That's *1/3* of your feats from levels 1-20, and we haven't talked about anything like Weapon Focus/Specialization and their greater counterparts, or feats for a ranged option, or out of combat abilities, or really anything beyond making a full attack with two weapons. Do we really want the fighter to be the class that can do 3 things reasonably well or ~5 things marginally well?

For comparison, the 20th level wizard has 36 discrete 'tricks' (spells) with durations ranging from instantaneous to all day, plus 3 specialist abilities and 18 SLAs/day, +1 spell through the Arcane Bonded item. Sure, those tricks are all one use, but an adventuring day encompasses 3-6 encounters, meaning the wizard can use 9+ tricks per encounter without being in danger of running out. Given the durations, some tricks will apply in more than one encounter and won't take actions, but even so that's more available tricks/encounter than the wizard will actually get actions to use during those encounters. And we haven't even counted his feats yet (all 15 of them). And all of the wizard's tricks are amazing when used in the right situation.

So it really matters if feats are staying mostly as-is, or if they're getting compressed. For example: TWF becomes one feat which gives you as many attacks with your off hand as with your primary hand. If feats were streamlined so tricks + enhancers cost 1-3 feats, the fighter is looking at ~10 tricks instead of 3, and we can feel a lot better about the fighter class as its written.

[Jason Nelson]

Squirrelloid wrote:

Over levels 1-20 the fighter gets 21 feats in beta. It sounds like an awful lot, but the relevant metric here is the number of 'tricks' the fighter is capable of.

Consider TWFing. The basic TWFing trick requires 3 feats to be viable at all levels (TWF, ITWF, GTWF). (Really, it requires a 4th, Supreme TWF, but that's not in beta/core). However, at that point you're not a very good TWFer, you need to add some enhancer feats - probably all of Double Slice, TW Rend, Vital Strike and IVS. You just spent 7(8) feats on 1 trick. That's *1/3* of your feats from levels 1-20, and we haven't talked about anything like Weapon Focus/Specialization and their greater counterparts, or feats for a ranged option, or out of combat abilities, or really anything beyond making a full attack with two weapons. Do we really want the fighter to be the class that can do 3 things reasonably well or ~5 things marginally well?

For comparison, the 20th level wizard has 36 discrete 'tricks' (spells) with durations ranging from instantaneous to all day, plus 3 specialist abilities and 18 SLAs/day, +1 spell through the Arcane Bonded item. Sure, those tricks are all one use, but an adventuring day encompasses 3-6 encounters, meaning the wizard can use 9+ tricks per encounter without being in danger of running out. Given the durations, some tricks will apply in more than one encounter and won't take actions, but even so that's more available tricks/encounter than the wizard will actually get actions to use during those encounters. And we haven't even counted his feats yet (all 15 of them). And all of the wizard's tricks are amazing when used in the right situation.

So it really matters if feats are staying mostly as-is, or if they're getting compressed. For example: TWF becomes one feat which gives you as many attacks with your off hand as with your primary hand. If feats were streamlined so tricks + enhancers cost 1-3 feats, the fighter is looking at ~10 tricks instead of 3, and we can feel a lot better about the fighter...

Agreed.

[Dennis da Ogre]

While I'm not sold on the 36 tricks bit, the number of unique tricks a wizard has far outstripes a fighter at nearly every level. For that matter nearly every class in the book out-'tricks' the fighter even with the feats, in particular now that the barbarian has rage powers.

So Yes... what he said. More options, more things other than yet another way to add to damage, and more options outside melee.