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Design Notes:
- Fighters should be more flexible! Being locked into one fighting style is kind of disappointing for a class that's touted as weapon masters. In my opinion, a fighter should be able to pick up a new weapon or combat style with ease. Thus, I'm going for something akin to a wizard's spell preparation.
- I've always liked the Manual of War, but they're too expensive for low-level characters to make use of; decided to use it as a starting point.
- By making the ability Intelligence-based, I've added an incentive for fighters not to dump the stat; they still can, but there's an opportunity cost. If all you're interested in is dealing lots of damage with a two-hander, for example, you're not missing out on much, but if you'd rather be a master of many styles, then you'd definitely benefit from a high Int score.
Take a look at this...
From Iron Heroes (revised) Man-at-Arms class (IH's "ordinary" fighter)
"Wild Card Feats: At 5th, 11th, and 20th level, you gain access to a wild card feat, a feat that can change each day. This represents the broad range of training and fighting styles to which you have been exposed. You can pick a feat to fill the “wild card” slot as a standard action. You retain this feat for the rest of the day. After you rest for eight hours, the wild card slot resets to empty, allowing you to choose a different feat to fill its place. The wild card feat represents the broad, varied nature of your training."
I took out the system specific language.
Hope this helps.
I've seen the idea in the form of a series of third party feats.
Basically they were just Combat feats that can be retrained each day as another combat feat for which you meet the prerequisites. If given an hour you can retrain on the fly. I've implemented them in my games and they're popular but have mostly been used by Monks to change up style feats until I bought a third party product that had Tome of Battle-type maneuver feats.
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We use a similar one, but allow it for any number of Fighter feats. It allows the Fighter to be a true master of styles (suddenly, he can use that bizarre exotic weapon you picked up the other day!). It allows the Fighter to be good at fighting, while giving them options, without increasing the complexity of the class like many fixes.
It also encourages you to keep leveling in Fighter instead of just dipping it. One retrainable feat is useful, but having a half-dozen of them means you can adapt into an entire feat tree.
Mastery of Styles (Level 1 Ability, Ex) A Fighter may swap out any and all of their Fighter bonus feats on a daily basis by retraining in a different style. To use Mastery of Styles, a Fighter must get a good nights sleep and spend one hour training in the appropriate weapons style. Only Fighter bonus feats, not character feats or other bonus feats, may be retrained in this way. A Fighter must still meet any prerequisites for any feats they retrain into, or any other feats or prestige classes they have.
Example: Valeros, a 6th level Fighter, has the bonus feats Weapon Focus: Longsword, Weapon Specialization: Longsword, Combat Reflexes, and Improved Shield Bash. Knowing that he’ll be fighting flying harpies today, he retrains his feats into Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot, and Weapon Focus: Longbow. He can’t select Shot on the Run, as he doesn’t meet the prerequisites with his current feat set. The next day, Valeros knows he’ll be duelling humanoids. He’d like to retrain in Combat Expertise and Improved Disarm, but lacks the 13 Int necessary.
Staunch Defender (Level 3, Ex): A good Fighter is tough in body, fleet of foot, and strong of mind. At 3rd level, and every odd level beyond, a Fighter gains a +1 bonus to a save of their choosing (Fort, Ref, Will). These untyped bonuses stack.
You know, I thought about having all of the fighter's bonus feats re-trainable each day, but I thought it might be too much. Your party doesn't find it to be too powerful?
My base Fighters can retrain whenever they gain a Fighter Bonus Feat. So far, so good.
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You know, I thought about having all of the fighter's bonus feats re-trainable each day, but I thought it might be too much. Your party doesn't find it to be too powerful?
I thought the same at first. In theory, maybe, but in practice, no. There's three limiting factors for it.
1) It requires foreknowledge, which can be hard to get. If you're expecting to fight flying creatures, great! Train with a bow. But if you climb the mountain expecting harpies and get wall-crawling mites that can only be fought in tight spaces, whoops... How often do you know exactly what sort of trouble you're walking into? It's no more powerful than a prepared caster's ability to prepare spells - if you know what's coming, you can set up well for it, but the majority of the time you're only guessing anyway.
2) It's only for fighting. If today's problem is convincing Lord Snooty to stop his political machinations against the king, being able to Improved Disarm his guards is helpful as a backup plan... but it won't really make you a substitute for the bard.
3) The prereqs prevent a lot of the abuse. You can't take a poor feat for prestige qualification and retrain later without losing the prestige class abilities. The high Dex requirements prevent you training into all the archery tree feats without actually having the Dex, and Combat Expertise and the followons still require 13 Int. You often end up with Fighters spreading their points instead of min-maxing a single stat.
Where we've found it most useful is in finding a quality magic weapon and simply being able to retrain your Focus/Spec into it rather than leaving it because you've already invested in longswords; or for switching those archery feats to a greatclub because you're expecting a horde of zombies with DR/bludgeoning.
I think I'll give your suggestion a shot, Reverse. Maybe play some one-shots to see how it plays out before deciding whether to adopt it for good.