Here's your chance to sound off and tell me what about fighters. I'll start by offering a few questions as a jumping off point to the discussion.
1) What should a fighter be able to do? What can a fighter do at 1st level? 6th level? 20th level?
2) What are they better at than other classes?
3) What do you particular like about the implementation of the core Pathfinder fighter?
4) What do you particularly dislike?
5) Who are some fictional characters you see as embodying the fighter class?
6) What are some characteristics of fighters you see as a part of a part of the D&D/Pathfinder that are not particularly true of fictional warriors?
7) How much do you love The Talented Fighter by Super Genius Games? A lot? A huge amount? More than life itself?
8) How do they compare in balance to other classes?
1) Use weapons and armor better than other classes, engage single or multiple foes, pull thought the worst situations (beyond the use of armor and weapons), deduce the weak point in an opponent's strategy and exploit it (the way a chess or fencing master figures out an opponent strategy and deduces their next move).
2) Landing attacks is any situations, without reliance on situational or X/day class features.
3) I mostly like it.
4) I think Bravery should go. Replace it with something the player can pick from a list, for a little customization beyond feats. Also, I'd like to see a little more support for anyone who wants to play a fighter who is intelligent, wise, or charismatic.
5) Gimli and Legolas are the first that come to mind... Thorin Oakenshield & company. Roy Greenhilt is an example of a fighter with above average mental abilities. Big dummies like MinMax have their place too. Honestly though, they're in every corner of fantasy, from the Lannisters and Starks to the vikings in 13th Warrior to Beowolf or Hector and Achilles. Heck, even Tom Cruise in the Last Samurai was probably a fighter.
6) I'm unsure how to answer at this time.
7) I am unfamiliar with this product.
Neither do I, but hey, why not.
1. Battle! Fight! Shed blood and hold the field!
2. Crushing enemies with the strength of arms.
3. I like it. For realsies.
4. I think there are enough archetypes that I don't really dislike it.
5. Beren. Achilles. Odysseus. Miyamoto Mushashi. Beowulf.
6. Training is implied, rather than mandatory. Combatants are good to the last drop, rather than impacted by their wounds.
7. Not really familiar with it.
8. They have very different roles. Personally, I find the idea of balance across classes quaint. They have different places in society and culture, and expecting all classes to be equivalent is asking for disappointment.
-Ben.
I'm not quite sure I understand why this in the Compatable Products from other Publishers forum ...
I'm giving the pot a stir.
Contributor; Developer, Super Genius Games
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For me fighter should be versatile and the time you are building them. The super genius game do that. I have just read it once (I do not have it myself) but I recall correctly there is no way to sacrifice something in order to have more out of combat utility (for example heavy armor prof for 2 extra skill per level), and I find that dissapointing.
The problem with that idea is that the fighter can just pick up Heavy Armor Proficiency as a feat, so what such a design is [i]really] saying is that one feat is worth +2 skill points/level, and that's pretty clearly not the case. For example, as a favored class bonus you can have +1 skill point or +1 hit point, so those must be close to equivalent. Toughness gives you +1 hit point/level (though it frontloads three of them). Therefore a feat is, at beast, worth 1 skill point/level.
Of course you could sacrifice both heavy armor proficiency and tower shields for 2 skill points/level -- but beginning proficiencies are not, inf act, as powerful as those a character selects, since they lack flexibility and often include elements a specific character build does not need. Maybe you sacrifice all shields and heavy armor for 2 skill points/level...
But if you're going to do that, why not allow a a monk to give up proficiency with kama, nunchaku, and short sword for +2 skill points?
There ARE ways to balance this kind of option, but it's outside the scope of a plug-and-play product like this one, which is supposed to give the core fighter more flexibility, rather than turning it into a character-class-creation system.
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Things I'd like to see for Fighters;
1) More effective use of armor and weapons over other classes, like the armor optimization ability of Dark Sun Gladiators, or the bonus weapon damage (+1 / 2 levels) of 1st edition monks. Heck, those two options could even be mutually exclusive, with a Fighter choosing round by round to go offense or go defense, maximizing his weapon damage or his AC in a given round.
2) Options to be more effective *without* certain levels of armor, swapping out Heavy or Medium armor proficiencies for dodge bonuses to AC only usable when unarmored / unemcumbered, to make swashbuckler-y or desert-y or arctic-themed fighters more viable.
3) Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization and similar 'this feat applies to one weapon' feats applying to entire weapon groups for Fighters and Fighters only. If he bought the feat before he had a weapon group, he can choose one weapon group that weapon belongs to and that feat now applies to that entire group, so that someone who started with Weapon Focus (spear) who later chooses that Weapon Focus to apply to all weapons in the weapon group - Spears or - Thrown Weapons, depending on which one he chooses as his Weapon Training.
4) 4+Int skill ranks per level for fighters (and clerics, paladins, sorcerers, wizards, summoners and witches!).
Owen is right about balancing class features. Swapping out some armor proficiencies for 1 skill point/level is balanced, if you can delay at least one feat acquisition (otherwise, someone will just take the armor proficiency with a free feat or multiclass for it, and tradeoff in a different area, probably something unrelated). If you look at the Corsair and the Gladiator in Fistful of Denarii you can see that they get more skill points, and altered armor proficiencies, and less free choices at lower levels. The Talented Fighter is probably the last word on the core fighter; after that, there's just writing more and more fighter talents.
As with Monk Reborn, I'm looking at rebuilding the spine of the class. In this case, with the fighter, the main deficiencies I see are a lack of non-combat utility, and a lack of counters for monster special abilities. I see the fighter as being strong at its primary tasks, but it's too specialized. I can understand the appeal of the 4 ranks/level skills fighter, but I'm not sure I want to go that route. While a person who goes up against a dragon armored mostly with a sword and pure grit is undoubtedly a "skilled" person, I see them as being somewhat married to their art, as with the cleric and wizard. But traditionally, fighters are leaders of men, if not diplomats, and I'd like to see that element. When I think of fighters, I think of Gimli, Legolas, Madmartigan, Musashi, Odysseus, all of whom qualify as charismatic but not necessarily "face" characters.
I'm definitely down with Perception being a class skill for fighters, although I am okay with the fighter not having enough ranks to max out many skills. And actually, a human fighter who chooses skill ranks for their favored class bonus can have a boatload of skills, even without a high Intelligence. Originally, I had the notion of fighter talents that could add skill ranks while building out their class skills, but on reflection, I am leaning more toward situational bonuses instead.
1) What should a fighter be able to do?
Be a powerful combatant, at least competent in 2 chosen battle styles (whereas most classes are limited to one besides the usual 2H/Bow switch hitter), without being crippled out of combat as he currently is due to lack of skills and class features.
In essence, the Fighter should be the most versatile combatant on the field (if not necessarily the most powerful in straight damage dealing), while still remaining average OUT of combat.
What can a fighter do at 1st level? 6th level? 20th level?
Currently?
1st level: Swing a sword pretty good.
6th level: Swing a sword better.
20th level: Swing a sword REALLY good.
(Replace "Swing a sword" with combat focus of your choice for Archers, Maneuver users, and so on.)
2) What are they better at than other classes?
Having good damage while retaining solid AC and movement speed in armor, which is not dependent on usable resources.
They are good damage dealers, this is not (and should not be) in question.
3) What do you particular like about the implementation of the core Pathfinder fighter?
They're good for creating off-color builds that are usually Feat intensive, I like that.
They have Feats to spare for weird stuff like Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Battle Ladder, or Net and Trident and things like that.
This is a good thing (though mitigated somewhat by the absolute necessity of grabbing certain Feats to shore up weaknesses they have that others don't as much, like Saves).
4) What do you particularly dislike?
Lack of skills and baked in out of combat utility. This leads to little incentive to invest in skills, because unless you go all out on it, and grab archetypes (which diminish your combat ability significantly), you're better off just not being a Fighter.
As well, their in-combat ability is lackluster as well, because despite their damage dealing prowess, their saves and options are poor.
Contrast with the Paladin, Ranger, or Barbarian, who all have better saves, more skills, and more options (minor spellcasting for the former two, Rage Powers adding new in-combat options for the latter), and are therefore better balanced to the game as a whole.
5) Who are some fictional characters you see as embodying the fighter class?
Fighters as they are now? None really come to mind in particular. Most are bit characters, meant to be an expendable meat shield.
As I would like them to be? Most Weapon Master characters or ones with Charles Atlas Superpowers. Mundane but more, if you will.
Anime Characters like Kenshin (Rurouni Kenshin), Dracule Mihawk and Zoro (One Piece, though this level of power should be reserved for higher levels for sure), Mugen and Jin (Samurai Champloo), and so on.
Characters in literature like Jaime Lannister (Song of Ice and Fire), most Blademasters from Wheel of Time (Rand and Lan most prominently), Araris Valerian and to a lesser extent most Metalcrafters (Codex Alera).
Videogame characters such as Link (Legend of Zelda), Altair ibn La'Ahad/Ezio Auditore/Connor (Assassin's Creed).
What all of these characters have in common:
-They are deadly with a weapon.
-They are skilled at SOMETHING besides swordplay.
-While (mostly) not magic users, they can hold their own in combat with such, and are just as dangerous a force on the battlefield.
-They're strong willed, fast, or both (good saves, basically)
6) What are some characteristics of fighters you see as a part of a part of the D&D/Pathfinder that are not particularly true of fictional warriors?
They can ONLY do fighting as part of their core schtick. Most fictional warriors are not hit with this bat.
7) How much do you love The Talented Fighter by Super Genius Games? A lot? A huge amount? More than life itself?
Haven't read it.
8) How do they compare in balance to other classes?
Poorly.
Of the "Big 3" of underpowered classes (with Rogue and Monk), they are the best off. Being a powerful damage dealer is a big boon.
However, in comparison to most other classes, they fall short in pretty much everything else, and it's not because the other 80% of classes are too powerful.
Here's your chance to sound off and tell me what about fighters. I'll start by offering a few questions as a jumping off point to the discussion.
1) What should a fighter be able to do? What can a fighter do at 1st level? 6th level? 20th level?
2) What are they better at than other classes?
3) What do you particular like about the implementation of the core Pathfinder fighter?
4) What do you particularly dislike?
5) Who are some fictional characters you see as embodying the fighter class?
6) What are some characteristics of fighters you see as a part of a part of the D&D/Pathfinder that are not particularly true of fictional warriors?
7) How much do you love The Talented Fighter by Super Genius Games? A lot? A huge amount? More than life itself?
1) This is kind of a hard question. Fighter is probably the most generic of all concepts. Its the guy who fights. Part of me wishes it wasnt part of the game because the genericness of it makes it so limited. What character from fiction was just a fighter? Ranger, Paladin, Warlord/Commander, sure. But fighter? Its almost like the fighter is the middle ground between the npc classes and the 'real' pc classes.
Personally I like what tome of battle did, and look forward to dreamscared press' upcoming product. I want my fighters to be able to do cool and interesting things besides swinging a sword and wearing armor.
2) Fighting, they do more damage consistently then anyone else. Thats about it.
3) Weapon training is pretty cool, so is armor training, but there isnt a whole lot to shout about.
4) They are too mundane. After 6th level characters are superhuman, but somehow fighters are still just swinging their sword a little better. Its really, really boring.
5) I dont. I think the concept of the fighter doesnt fit any fictional characters. They all have more to them then guy with sharp bit of metal.
6) The part where all they do is swing bits of metal.
7) A lot. One of my players in my current game is playing one to make a free hand fighter actually work. In general I really like the talented line, because it means you can use all the cood ideas from all the paizo created archetypes without having to deal with all the baggage you also had to take.
In terms of out-of-combat utility, what are you guys looking for? Face skills? Challenge-solving abilities? Mobility? Knowledge?
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1) What should a fighter be able to do? What can a fighter do at 1st level? 6th level? 20th level?
Beat the crap out of stuff. Perform impressive physical feats. A high level fighter should be able to tie down a powerful foe or easily handle a horde of lesser foes.
2) What are they better at than other classes?
Doing damage with a non-magic weapon. King of combat maneuvers.
3) What do you particular like about the implementation of the core Pathfinder fighter?
Flexible Extra feats, fighter-only feats.
4) What do you particularly dislike?
What's not to like? The class is as simple or complex as you want it to be. I wouldn't mind an extra bonus or two on Combat maneuvers.
5) Who are some fictional characters you see as embodying the fighter class?
Roy Greenhilt, Bronn of Blackwater, Boromir, Ladd Russo, Lobo
6) What are some characteristics of fighters you see as a part of a part of the D&D/Pathfinder that are not particularly true of fictional warriors?
none that I care about
7) How much do you love The Talented Fighter by Super Genius Games? A lot? A huge amount? More than life itself?
Not familiar with it.
The lack of talented fighter knowledge concerns me.
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All 3rd party material is banned in my groups. Nothing non official.
This makes the Baby Game Designer cry.
Huge, wailing tears of sorrow and regret for your exclusion. You make the Baby Game Designer sad, as clowns and puppies without homes are sad.
Carry on.
-Ben.
I'm not going to be interested in any new Fighter that can only be 2 + Int skill points; Good at fighting and bad at everything else makes for a poor character. I don't think that boosting a Fighter from 2 + Int skill points to 4 + Int will overpower him; SGG introduced the Warmaster with full armor, 4 + Int skill points and it seems to work out well. I've proposed this on other threads, but I might as well post it here:
Give a Fighter an optional trait for 4 + Int skill points/level and the ability to add Perception, Sense Motive and Heal to his skills. If the Fighter is only interested in fighting but later finds he needs/wants more skills, make it available as a Feat later. It might be good for a similar trait/feat be available to Paladins, but without the bonus skills ( they have Heal and Knowledge(religion), and that seems to work out ).
I don't deny there is some bad 3PP out there, but there are also a lot of good designers: SGG, Tripod Machine, Dreamscarred ( if you like Psionics ) and Kobold Press are all good. Rite Publishing does some good stuff, too.
Since this is the Compatible Products section, I'm going to note that for the purposes of this discussion, 3pp material is assumed.
Should fighters have Diplomacy as a class skill?
Should fighters have Diplomacy as a class skill?
Probably not. It doesn't fit their persona.
They can ONLY do fighting as part of their core schtick. Most fictional warriors are not hit with this bat.Conan... despite him being labled a "Barbarian", in the Schwarzenegger movies, he's essentially a trained pit fighter.
And yet he's competent when not in combat as well. He at the very least has Survival, Climb/Swim, probably Intimidate (I think he intimidates people a few times, anyway), Perception (doesn't he notice ambushes before they happen quite a few times?) and so on.
That's already at the very limit of what a 10 Int Human Fighter can accomplish (1 rank each in Climb/Swim offset by high Str, max out the others as much as possible), and doesn't take into account skills he may have used pretty effectively on rare-ish occasions.
Skilled fighter, yes, but that's not ALL he was, is my point.
Hercules... Hitting things IS pretty much all he does, save for some handy CMB moves from time to time.
Got me here. I'm very unclear on the exact details of Herculean myth though besides "He did X with Y thing and Z happened", so he may have used skills within the stories as well.
Sturrm Brightblade
Was a Paladin. In name at least, though now I think of it he never really used any Paladin-y powers that I can recall, so he may have been a Fighter class-wise.
Still, he had Perception, Kn. Religion, Kn. Nobility (I think he stated noble lineages and stuff others didn't know on a few occasions), Kn. Local, Perception, etc.
Tanis as well if I'm not mistaken, from Dragonlance, at least until he hits the midlevels.
Not convinced on this one either. Tanis always seemed more a "Ranger without spells" to me, though I may be remembering it waaaay wrong. I remember him as being very woods-wise with all the skills that entails (Climb/Swim, Survival, Perception) and some other stuff.
Roy Greenhilt, save that he's actually an "intelligent fighter", who actually made use of his Engineering skill in one of his more memorable combats.
Yar. Roy's probably the closest, since he seems to have few "skills" but still be very intelligent (though how, exactly, that works...). Kn. Engineering, Diplomacy, and that's about it?
I haven't read all that much about OoTS (I think I got up to like 150 or something?), so I can't make a solid judgement on this one either (Dragonlance I read yeaaaaars ago, so remember them fuzzily as well).
However, these last 3, if you're correct and I'm misremembering, have something in common: They're all based (tightly or loosely) on DnD.
So they don't really count as examples for either of our side, really.
Hercules was a renowned Olympic athlete, master of the discus, hunt, and bow, in addition to his phenomenal fighting skills. He definitely did not have any ranks in Sense Motive, however.
Tanis was a tracker, stalker, and a face guy. Practically speaking, he was Aragorn smooshed together with Shea Olmsford from Sword of Shanarra. Nominally, he is a fighter. He is considered the leader of the original group.
Sturm is a Knight of Solamnia. In Pathfinder terms, he is a fighter, or a cavalier variant with no mount. He lives in a world where paladin is a prestige class.
Conan is not a Pathfinder barbarian. While the AD&D barbarian was based to a great extent on Conan, and the D&D 3e barbarian on that, it also merged with the berserker kit and a number of wild and exotic warrior kits from AD&D 2e. I saw a 3.0 writeup that made him a barbarian 1/rogue 1/fighter X, but I think even one level of barbarian is unnecessary, apart from fast movement. In Pathfinder, he's a rogue/fighter with pumped up Climb, Linguistics, and Stealth skills and the Fleet feat. He doesn't berserk, and it's hard to identify if he has DR, since he mostly gets captured because of spells, grappling, poison, or overwhelming odds.
Characters like Gimli from Lord of the Rings and Thorin Oakenshield from the Hobbit scream Fighter ( and in the case of Thorin, at least a few levels of Aristocrat - He was of noble history ). Aragorn, if I may compare him to a 3PP character class, seems like a Spell-less Ranger! I'm not sure if I'd dub all of Thorin's company - excluding Gandalf and Bilbo - as Fighters, though they did have the typical Dwarven hatreds of orcs and goblins. They were Dwarves of who-knows-what classes.
I made a Ranger Fighter once. He had high dex and moderate int for the archery and the skill points.
All his combat feats went into archery and all his natural feats went into rangery stuff like Skill Focus: Survival or Alertness.
He had two traits that gave him Perception and Stealth as class skills. I probably could have taken a dip into ranger or rogue just for the class skills but I wanted to do things as a straight fighter.
Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization gave me Favored Enemy: Everyone.
He was everything that a ranger should be: elusive, perceptive, good with a bow, able to track a deer over hard rocks three days after it passed.
He missed out on the nature stuff like spells and an animal companion so he was more of a commando ranger than a 1/8 druid ranger (which is how I think of vanilla rangers).
But all in all I thought my fighter made one hell of a ranger.
There are so many fighter builds beyond "dur hur I hit it wit mah sord".
What kind of fighter do you want to be? A battlefield tactician better than a Cavalier? A crowd control tripper who parks it in the middle of the enemy formation and keeps everyone locked down? A slab of meat who's impossible to move, hit, or pester?
Conan is not a Pathfinder barbarian. While the AD&D barbarian was based to a great extent on Conan, and the D&D 3e barbarian on that, it also merged with the berserker kit and a number of wild and exotic warrior kits from AD&D 2e. I saw a 3.0 writeup that made him a barbarian 1/rogue 1/fighter X, but I think even one level of barbarian is unnecessary, apart from fast movement. In Pathfinder, he's a rogue/fighter with pumped up Climb, Linguistics, and Stealth skills and the Fleet feat. He doesn't berserk, and it's hard to identify if he has DR, since he mostly gets captured because of spells, grappling, poison, or overwhelming odds.
Since I read the whole original chronicles recently, I disagree. Quite often, Conan rages, is fatigued afterwords and is described winning against better trained/subtler combatants (fighters) by pure fury. Level of rogue is not really realistic since his stealing is mostly athletics and acrobatics and strenght checks, rather than sleight of hand and disable device. His uncanny senses are (ha!)uncanny dodge and trap sense. DR is questionable, but those glancing blows he takes because of his extraordinary reflexes could be interpreted as DR.
On the OP, pretty much what atarlost said. Otherwise, my take on fixing the fighter is fixing the feats. Scaling feats and feats that grant more effects at higher levels fix fighters as much as other melee characters compared to casters.