Think you have enough Fighter Talents? Do you even know what Fighter Talents are? Wait.... Fighters can have talents? I thought only rogues get talents? And while we're at it, what kind of party has a cavalier, a barbarian and a ranger, but no fighter? Not to mention a GM who hands out awesome magic items at first level? (And does that mean Uni is the ranger's animal companion?)
Anyway, hot on the heels of the Genius Guide to the Talented Fighter (with four 5-star reviews!), comes the Genius Guide to More Fighter Talents, which adds over 25 new talents for you to chose from!
The Genius Guide to the Talented Fighter (did I mention it has four 5-star reviews?) rewrites the classic fighter class to use talents rather than static class abilities alternating with bonus feats. Rather than require all fighters be brave and balance their efforts between armor and weapon bonuses, each fighter can custom-fit the classes abilities to match a player’s specific concept. This greater flexibility allows the fighter to be the default combat-oriented character without limiting it to just one or two styles of fighting. Like a rogue, a fighter character can pick and choose from a range of similarly-powered abilities appropriate for the fighter’s role without making the class overpowered. The talented fighter still fills the same role in the party but can customize his combat style and abilities to fill a much broader range of concepts.
Oh, for just the weight of $1.99 in my eager hands!
Great, I'm still trying to convince my wife the last purchase was a must have, now I have to try again. It's mine by the end of the week.
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In my highly opinionated opinion, the sequel was better than the original. (Read about it in my review.)
Excellent. Nice follow up. Thanks!
Contributor; Developer, Super Genius Games
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I am glad you are all pleased. There really was significant support for a quick follow up, and since this ended u being WAAY too long for a Bullet Point, but shorter than a typical Genius Guide, I decided to experiment with the $1.99 follow up product. I'll be curious to see how this goes.
So I picked the talented fighter up today with an idea for a npc i though might be interesting that I thought I could put together using this system. And boy could I. Actually, I am a bit concerned with how well he could be put together. Basically unless I am missing something, none of the weapon training replacement options, including weapon training itself, exclude the others explicately as written here. Only Twin Blades gives the hint of it, and that says weapon mastery, not weapon training, and still doesnt exclude the others.
The talents of concern are
Leaping attack: Scales on its own, and stacks with all the other weapon training replacements.
Singleton: Doesnt scale, but has greater version, stacks with all other weapon training replacements, but circumstantially excludes twin blades
Twin blades: Doesnt scale but can be taken every 4 level (which fits rather neatly with weapon training and leaping attack.
Weapon traing: Can be taken at first level 6th, 11th, and 16th levels.
Ready Pike also scales on its own, and steadfast pike can be taken multiple times. These also potentially (baring circumstances) stack with the other weapon training like talents.
You could end up with something like Weapon training 4 times, twin blades 4 times, and leaping attack for a total of +12 to attack and damage rolls when you 5ft step and attack with 2 weapons.
The character I was thinking of is level 6 and he would have the equivalent of weapon training 4, With Weapon Training talents twice (1st and 6th level), singleton at second level and leaping attack at 5th.
I am also concerned about the fact that singleton can only be increased twice, where as the archetype the bonus increases 3 times (at 5, 11, and 17) but at least as things stand that is negated by the fact that it stacks with the weapon training talent, though my assumption is that that stacking wasnt intentional.
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Contributor; Developer, Super Genius Games
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Yeah those numbers can get pretty impressive, and I did a lot of playtesting on them. The reason they get so impressive is that they have to, to compete with the effectiveness of a heavily armored fighter either wielding either a high-crit-range 2-handed weapon (fauchards and falchions are great for this; bardiche, heavy flails, and greatswords almost as good -- elven curveblade if you happen to be an elf) making full-attacks as often as possible. If the game is going to hit 11th level take mobile fighter to make sure you full-attack as often as possible (you'll miss weapon training sometimes, see below, but once you can move-and-full-attack it'll be fine). Tale Imp Crit and critical feats as soon as possible, since you'll be triggering them a lot.
It is nearly impossible for a character using a single one-handed weapon to come close to any of the above builds in effectiveness. If you have a heavy shield and some shield optimization options, your durability may get high enough to make up for it. But running around with a longsword and a free hand because you think it's neat? Even with free-hand fighter, you aren't in the same class.
Now, make the build you just mentioned? Yeah, you can keep up with the falchion-wielding damage monster. You've given up a lot of options to do so (oddly you are more encumbered by armor, despite being rewarded for being mobile). You won't get leaping attack all the time -- between being grappled, being in difficult terrain (and not wanting to use 10 feet of movement and thus give up a full attack), needing to stay between a monster and the casters, and being totally surrounded (and you are much less likely to have a cleave chain and whirlwind attack when the later occurs, since you used so many talents to be good with a single fighting style, and you STILL want Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization, and with your attack bonus Power attack and Combat expertise if your Str and Int are high enough, and you have to pick most of those up with your regular feats instead of bonus feats).
(Of course you can give leaping attack to someone with a fauchard too. That talent does a lot to keep the player moving around, as the chaos of combat often makes it impractical to just hop back and forth between the same two squares. That makes for interesting choices, and I liked the end result. It is, I confess, one of two options I think might represent a very modest power increase for fighters -- and I'm okay with that.)
In playtests, even builds that stacked bonuses like this proved no more effective than the best core-fighter builds. They could be more effective in specific circumstances (and then less effective in others), and they could match effectiveness with combinations you can;t maximize with the core fighter, but the end result was never better than the best core fighter.
What DID happen is that players who normally don't maximize fighters (because they find those combinations boring) found new fighter builds that were as good, or so close to as good as to not make a major difference. That's why I describe this system as "letting fighters be good at what fighters do in more ways," and if a group has never played with a maximized fighter PC, it's going to change the dynamic some.
As for singleton, I designed it to stack with weapon training. because otherwise, fighting with a single one-handed weapon and no shield is always a poor choice for pure effectiveness.
I admit I comparing them to their actual fighter archetypes, and I understand that many of those archetypes are themselves weaker then the core fighter, glad to know it was a deliberate choice to make it possible to be effective with some of those other stlyes (I always felt the free hand fighter especially didnt do enough to improve one handed combat).
So just to be clear, it was not your intention to make twin blades not stack with weapon training? It says "This bonus counts as (and does
not stack with) weapon mastery." It doesnt make alot of sense for it not to stack with weapon mastery since that is about crits and not attack/damage bonuses so I thought it was meant to prevent stacking with weapon training instead.
I have to say the flexibility this affords really does make playing a fighter actually seem interesting.
One last question, if you were going to create a super genius games archetype package equivalent to the battle master for the talented fighter, would it just be the talenets at 1,5,6,9,12,13,17 and 18th levels?
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Contributor; Developer, Super Genius Games
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So just to be clear, it was not your intention to make twin blades not stack with weapon training? It says "This bonus counts as (and does
not stack with) weapon mastery." It doesnt make alot of sense for it not to stack with weapon mastery since that is about crits and not attack/damage bonuses so I thought it was meant to prevent stacking with weapon training instead.
Oops. Yes.
One last question, if you were going to create a super genius games archetype package equivalent to the battle master for the talented fighter, would it just be the talenets at 1,5,6,9,12,13,17 and 18th levels?
Yes.
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MORE Fighter Talents? Man, you guys are like the corner pusher.
Holy crap, just realized this was a thing, better check my budget to accommodate for both pdfs.
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Contributor; Developer, Super Genius Games
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MORE Fighter Talents? Man, you guys are like the corner pusher.
I even give some away free on Facebook and Twitter!
...
Suddenly I feel unclean...
Holy crap, just realized this was a thing, better check my budget to accommodate for both pdfs.
You might as well just make us a permanent item on your budget, maybe right after "bills" but before "food." :D
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Contributor; Developer, Super Genius Games
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So here's what I'm wondering. Is a Talented Fighter compatible with Genius Archetypes?
It can be, but the data on how to do that isn't in this pdf. I normally note how to use Genius Archetypes with new Genius Classes in the next Archetype book.
But
To use the Talented Fighter with a Genius Archetype, sacrifice the talents gained at 1st, 2nd, 5th, 6th, 9th, 12th, 13th, 18th, and 19th level. Additionally, the character cannot take feats that require levels in the fighter class (such as Weapon Specialization).
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Contributor; Developer, Super Genius Games
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I normally note how to use Genius Archetypes with new Genius Classes in the next Archetype book.I hope this means there's one on the agenda in the near future, that's one of my favorite lines in all of 3.X (alongside loot4less of course)
Thanks for the kind words! Psychic Archetypes and Crusading Archetypes are both in various stages, as are some ideas with no project name yet. :)
Regardless, thanks for the Talented Fighter Archetype package.
You are very welcome!