First off, apologies to the admins if I put this in the wrong place. I'll try my best to avoid repeating that mistake in the future.
Now on to more important business.
I recently ran across a thread where one of the posters stated that a player could, "Make a boring generic fighter and watch your brain ooze out of your nose." I saw this and went, "Huh? I've never had that happen before with any of my characters, and I play quite a few fighter/barbarian types." Naturally, I decided to take this as a challenge, which I now extend to all of you.
Using only the Core Rulebook, the Figther or Barbarian class, a 20-point buy, and no archetypes, make an interesting, fun-to-play character.
I have a few, my favorite being a fighter/barbarian named Gkirkhan who's a lady's man, or so he thinks.
Anyway, have fun, I look forward to seeing what crazy stuff you can come up with.
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Challenge declined.
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First off, apologies to the admins if I put this in the wrong place. I'll try my best to avoid repeating that mistake in the future.
Now on to more important business.
I recently ran across a thread where one of the posters stated that a player could, "Make a boring generic fighter and watch your brain ooze out of your nose." I saw this and went, "Huh? I've never had that happen before with any of my characters, and I play quite a few fighter/barbarian types." Naturally, I decided to take this as a challenge, which I now extend to all of you.
Using only the Core Rulebook, the Figther or Barbarian class, a 20-point buy, and no archetypes, make an interesting, fun-to-play character.
I have a few, my favorite being a fighter/barbarian named Gkirkhan who's a lady's man, or so he thinks.
Anyway, have fun, I look forward to seeing what crazy stuff you can come up with.
How does the fighter get the brain ooze they are in bestiary 3.
In a large group, a fighter with combat expertise and a range of combat maneuver feats could provide a lot of variety. I played a monk in that vein who was the only melee-er in a group of wizards and all that stopped the bad guys from getting to the squishy mage-meat was me and a couple of summoned aurochs.
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Honestly, interesting characters, at least in my opinion, have very little to do with the actual mechanics that a player is using, and everything to do with the player that is using the mechanics. If the player creates an interesting back story that is role played out, and the respective back story meshes well with what the rest of the group comes up with then the respective character can be very interesting. Even as a fighter taking combat feats to max out the role he chooses to fill.
Example:
Standard Fighter, Elf race, takes weapon training composite longbow, and goes down the standard archery feat (Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot, Many Shot, etc.) as well as other standard fighter feats (weapon focus, weapon specialization, greater versions their of) ends up just being a bland standard archer fighter. Effective in combat as most archer fighters are want to be, but not super interesting based on standard tactics in combat alone.
Background: A native Kyonin elf shell-shocked by what he has witnessed while fighting Demons in the Tanglebriar. Shaken by that horror he has moved to the wider world to try and discover a way to end the fighting sooner by searching for an artifact powerful enough to end Treerazor for good, and reclaim the forest for the elves.
Simple, go get the MacGuffin to kill SUPER BBEG, ties into the setting (Hope the assumption with golarion is all right for these purposes), and gives a possible epic level encounter for the DM to go to should the campaign ever get that far.
Is it soap opera level? probably not, but their should be plenty of role-playing opportunities for a guy that has some trauma from fighting demons most of his rather long life (even gives an excuse for having a low charisma).
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Teat ceremony? I need to learn more about elves........
(sorry couldn't resist)
Have a close read of the combat section - even a "plain jane" warrior has tons of options. Feats often act to provide bonuses, improve action economy or prevent attacks of opportunity when exercising an existing combat action. Don't let eating an occasional AoO or attacking with a suboptimal bonus prevent you from using other tactics.
Also, with so many feats it's hard to build a boring fighter - mine has tons of tricks up his sleeve and has a number of good strategies to use depending on the encounter.
If you're looking for some builds, you can check out this thread. It doesn't have any restrictions on builds other than what the builder uses. You can find several interesting characters there.
I agree w/the posters so far; boring is in the eye of the PLAYERS, not the characters. Case in point is that I have a wizard character in my campaign right now; 20pt buy, no archetypes, chose to specialize in Abjuration. However, the player has chosen a personality for the character of that of a well meaning but grossly naive teenage kid.
Not super optimistic mind you, just simply dense when dealing with other people. 2 game sessions ago the party was doing some bookeeping, selling some itmes. They had a set of masterwork daggers and the wizard PC had done some research on them; the four daggers were created as a set for 4 brothers during a time of war and his Appraise skill told him they were worth more sold together than separately.
I set up a scene; just a quick fluff piece for the party to meet a dwarven collector and sell the daggers. The dwarf offered to buy the set...and the wizard declined. He was willing to sell 1 but didn't want to commit to all 4. Dwarves aren't known for kind hearted bargaining so the dwarf spat about how the daggers would be wasted in the hands of a child that hides behind his magic.
The player goes into a 5 minute tirade; not angrily mind you, but deadly serious. He explains that despite all the weapons this collector (one of the nobles of the town) had and his numerous guards it was the party that saved the town. Also dwarf would propose taking weapons specifically meant for the destruction of enemies and allow them to dull and collect dust behind glass rather than have the stones to use them.
A simple fluff scene darn near became a blood bath.
Thanks to the other characters on hand the dispute was resolved, none of the daggers were sold and the party went on their merry way. Needless to say if they go back to that town they have an enemy to deal with, at least socially unless the kid mouths off again.
But this is what makes the character interesting. Without the personality my buddy puts into him then he's just a crossbow-shooting abjurer with core feats, high int and an owl.
I think the issue with the fighter is that, unlike other classes, you just don't really do anything 'cool'.
I mean, a barbarian can rage and get special powers (that's cool).
An alchemist can drink potions and become a monster, or throw bombs like a maniac (that's cool).
A wizard uses magic (magic by definition equals cool).
A druid can wildshape (again, very cool).
A summoner...yea...a summoner can be stupid broken (but still cool)
But the question is...what's cool about the fighter class?
In my opinion, I do find the archetypes pretty darn cool (Lore Warden in particular has a special place in my heart). The problem is that a fighter's skill list (on its own) isn't that impressive: 2 skill points per level, with the only good skills being intimidate, survival, and knowledge dungeoneering...the rest are kinda...meh.
I mean, even the barbarian has a better array of skills (and more skill points to boot), which is sadly why I find the fighter base class kinda...well...uninteresting. Don't get me wrong, it can still be powerful (and more fun when combined with the right archetypes), but in general...it's just too...vanilla flavored for my taste.
I think the issue with the fighter is that, unlike other classes, you just don't really do anything 'cool'.
Maybe it is just that I am odd, but the fact a fighter is a blank slate is what I love the most about it. Most classes come with some kind of background already selected for you. Fighter really is blank and you get to mold it to what you want it to be.
For me, that is the "cool" part of that class.
Yeah, the fighter can be extremely versatile in combat. Additionally, because they get so many bonus combat feats, they can "afford" to spend feats on some interesting non-combat feats that other classes usually can't fit into their builds.
Conversely, I think it would be nice if fighters had some non-combat abilities. Maybe some inspiration can be taken from d20 Modern's Strong Hero base class. It would also be neat if there were maybe 6 pathways for fighters, based on Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma. Some of this might be handled through archetypes, but it would be nice if the core class offered non-combat versatility. There are other ways to fight besides combat (firefighting, debate, leading a resistance force, struggling against natural--and supernatural--disasters, etc. etc.).