So many of my issues with this game would be gone if full casters and spelless classes were both removed entirely from this game. We got plenty of great 4th level and 6th level classes that are around the same power level of each other, let's just use those.
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I disagree about 2E not giving Fighters anything. Granted what they received was not groundbreaking. Yet they had the best saves. At later levels receive a keep and followers. Weapon specialization while not the most amazing class feature. Was reserved for Fighters and no one else. I still felt in the previous edition that playing Fighters was more fun to me at least.
Rangers had to wear lighter armor or lose their skills....right, I said that.
And 2e didn't give Fighters anything...it did away with double spec and otherwise kept the benefits of 1e. There wasn't a LOT of change in the fundamentals in 2e...2e saves were basically the same as 1e, after all.
2e did slam the ranger. Going from +level to damage against giant-kin to +4 to hit was a huge nerf overall.
I think archetypes, advanced training in armor and weapons, Mastery feats, tricks, feats that... patch some wonkier pre reqs (IE Dirty Fighting for Combat Expertise or Defensed Movement for Dodge and Mobility, erasing certain crappy requirements and giving strong, general benefits), along with more and more feat chains that are worth it have helped the Fighter a lot. A looooot.
It's a little annoying that it's all been sort of patched in, but the options are there to actually make a powerful combatant useful to the party. Other martials can also pick up a lot of new options (And not feel completely gutted when taking some of them given the aforementioned eased pain of feat chains) but the fighter can now actually have a lot of good and versatile options. To the point where just making a core Fighter is a legit decision. Though admittedly this requires a silly amount of material and system mastery, at least you can finally feel rewarded for all that effort, and not have had the same (Edit: Read: much, much better) result as just rolling a paladin. Think CustomRobo vs purchasing a pre-made Gundam.
Still though, more mobility when attacking. Please. Just lock it behind Armor Training or something. Well, there is Bullete and Seigebreaker, so... take what you can get, I suppose.
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Would there be interest in pseudostatistical analyses of class disparities? I've been gathering data from the RotR and SS obituary threads.
From me, yes.
And I.
My spell flinger just walks out of the threatened area. Fighters are NOT the best in that situation.
Spell Flinger options that make them succeed here:** spoiler omitted ****
Yeah, spell flingers can do lots, this is one sample size. They just need to cast defensively and be careful about positioning things
Mm, nice one off spell for a certain circumstance on your little flower picking adventure of smoothly paved roads and sunny afternoons. Forget it, you're not in this dream you're in the reality of table top adventures:
A broken ship carcass washed up on the edge of an eroded rocky crop 100 feet from the shore, a stormy night with wild winds, uneven surfaces and splintered wood are your only footing. Weird monsters lurk in every corner of the wreck and some nasty traps and ambushes are waiting for you- but you need to get the ultimate mcguffin of plot device before the king tide ends or all elves will die.
Waldo the Wizard needs the following:
Fly checks from weather
Concentration from weather
Concentration from damage
Concentration from grapples
Enemy attacks of opportunity
Finite amount of spells
Freddy the Fighter needs the following:
Climb check, oh he brought his grappling hook, whats that freddy
Only has 1 ration and isn't going to share
As you can see, Freddy just needs to run up to stuff and hit it. Waldo on the other hand has to micromanage himself or his 10d6+2 hit dice are going to vanish faster than the elves he's trying to save. I know a lot of players here would be like 'but but but' but nothing, you don't get to know what situation you get thrust into, the enemy isn't going to just let you stand there and fling your fireballs and lighting bolts them and they most certainly are going to sunder your spell pouch or grapple your somatics or arrow you as you float around like a balloon waiting to be popped. Fighters don't care, they just get on with the job.
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Freddy the Fighter needs the following:
Climb check, oh he brought his grappling hook, whats that freddy
Only has 1 ration and isn't going to shareAs you can see, Freddy just needs to run up to stuff and hit it. Waldo on the other hand has to micromanage himself or his 10d6+2 hit dice are going to vanish faster than the elves he's trying to save.
I almost don't even know where to start here. Freddy doesn't just need to run up and hit stuff, he needs someone to repeatedly remove his hit point damage. He might need someone to enable him to fly because no amount of climbing or jumping is going to get you where you need to go. Along with any sort of removal, restoration or break enchantment style spells that may be needed.
As for the 10d6+2 hit points on a wizard, well this is just a farce. First, I don't even know how you can get +2 hit points short of taking only 2 of your favored class bonus in hit points, which is something I've never seen any caster take. Usually I see 10th level wizards with toughness and a +2 con belt, so it's usually something like 10d6+30, for an average of 75, then possibly adding on false life for ~15 temporary hit points, and stone skin, for DR 10/adamantine. Maybe if they're feeling cheap they cast defending bone for DR 5/bludgeoning instead. Regardless, you have a character walking around with more hit points than the cleric who is more than happy to front line in combat.
I know a lot of players here would be like 'but but but' but nothing, you don't get to know what situation you get thrust into,
The familiar who talks to the gods says otherwise. As does an entire school of magic, but hey...
the enemy isn't going to just let you stand there and fling your fireballs and lighting bolts them and they most certainly are going to sunder your spell pouch or grapple your somatics or arrow you as you float around like a balloon...
So you trade the cleric haste at the start of every combat for Freedom of Movement and laugh at grapple attempts, rely on your ~90 hit points plus DR to get you to the second round to cast vanish, and if your GM is the kind of person to sunder a spell component pouch you carry more than one, or take eschew materials, or just cast one of the many spells that doesn't require any components.
Waldo the Wizard needs the following:
Fly checks from weather
Concentration from weather
Concentration from damage
Concentration from grapples
Enemy attacks of opportunity
Finite amount of spells
So, a 10th level wizard who took fly as the skill associated with the last intelligence boost on his headband will have a fly skill of 10 ranks + 2 dex + 3 class skill + 4 good maneuverability + 5 for caster level, which comes to a +24 to fly. So say we're in a windstorm, -8 to fly check, need to make a DC 20 to move. Okay, so needing a 4 or higher to move. A slight inconvenience, but considering ranged attacks are now impossible, and the fighter still needs to roll a DC 10 strength check to move on the ground, likely needing a 4 as well, I'm perfectly happy with this arrangement. Any higher level of wind, and nobodies doing anything anyway, and any lower level of wind is pretty inconsequential, though the wizard will still enjoy the penalties to ranged attacks.
And concentration, so the 10th level wizard should be at +8 int mod and caster level 10, plus spellguard bracers, so +18 to all concentration and +20 to cast defensively. Concentration from weather, a DC 10 + spell level, inconsequential at this level, the wizard can't fail to make this check. Say instead it's violent motion, perfectly reasonable in this situation, so DC 15 + spell level, so 4th level spells are an automatic, needing a 2 for 5th level spells.
Concentration from damage, an actual concern. But if enemies are waiting all combat for you to cast so they can make readied range attacks at you, you've already done your job. The enemies are only working at a fraction of their potential, and still need to overcome any defenses you have to interrupt you. So say you still have that stoneskin going, enemies need to do more than 14 damage to have any chance of interrupting you. Of course blur or displacement make this much harder, and vanish or invisibility make this nearly impossible.
Concentration from grapples... don't exist because we have freedom of movement from the cleric. And even if we didn't, facing a CR 10 creature actually built around grapple, like say a Couatl, they have a +22 to grapple. So DC 32 + Spell level, so DC 33 and we have our liberating command. Not easy, but not impossible. And you really have to catch the wizard with his pants down to get this to work.
Enemy attacks of opportunity, well, we don't cast spells with ranged attacks while being threatened, and cast defensively, auto-succeeding up to level 3 spells, and rolling twice for the high level spells.
Finite amount of spells, as in, 25 spells per day. Not counting cantrips, wands scrolls or staves. So yes, we will have to limit ourselves, but even limiting ourselves, we're looking at 4-5 long duration buffs per day, so 20 spells for combat. Using 3 spells per combat gets us almost to 7 combats that day. If we're really going conservative, we might limit it to 2 actual spells with wand use and scrolls for 10 fights a day. And we're probably going to have a couple pearls of power at this point to renew simple stuff like magic missile, liberating command or vanish.
So, I'm not really seeing the problem here. If I'm the wizard, I'm gung ho to go explore the crashed ship out in the sea. Maybe a couple things like Life Bubble and Touch of the Sea to get me going.
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Mm, nice one off spell for a certain circumstance on your little flower picking adventure of smoothly paved roads and sunny afternoons. Forget it, you're not in this dream you're in the reality of table top adventures:
1st to 16th in Reign of Winter. Literally walked past the witch queens guards to stand over her and rain destruction down. Your dismissive attitude means I have no cause or interest in bothering with the rest of your argument. Enjoy your echo chamber sir.
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Mm, nice one off spell for a certain circumstance on your little flower picking adventure of smoothly paved roads and sunny afternoons. Forget it, you're not in this dream you're in the reality of table top adventures:1st to 16th in Reign of Winter. Literally walked past the witch queens guards to stand over her and rain destruction down. Your dismissive attitude means I have no cause or interest in bothering with the rest of your argument. Enjoy your echo chamber sir.
Did you just use invisibility, or some other tactic? PM the details please! (So as to not spoil anything for others.)
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My spell flinger just walks out of the threatened area. Fighters are NOT the best in that situation.
Mm, nice one off spell for a certain circumstance on your little flower picking adventure of smoothly paved roads and sunny afternoons. Forget it, you're not in this dream you're in the reality of table top adventures:Spell Flinger options that make them succeed here:** spoiler omitted ****
Yeah, spell flingers can do lots, this is one sample size. They just need to cast defensively and be careful about positioning things
A: many of these spells aren't situational, they are versatile. Air Walk, Grace, DDoor, Fly, etc. are spells you prepare every day because they can help in a lot of situations. They are also incredibly cool spells that most with the option to use would.
B:Many of these spells you take because you expect challenges from a wide variety of places.
As you can see, Freddy just needs to run up to stuff and hit it.
This highlights the problem with fighters quite well. All a fighter can do is move up and hit it. A fighter has to fight. A wizard chooses to fight, or to vanish, or to charm, or to fly past, or to teleport around, or to disguise himself as a nonthreat, or to turn into a nonthreat, or to summon something to fight as he walks past, or to render unconscious with magic, or a barely finite list of other options, which grows with every book.
As for the rest of this post, a universalist can easily have 23 spells/day by the time he has 10d6 HD. Add 5 if he specializes. Add in pearls of power, scrolls, and metamagic rods he can craft. Add in an arcane bond for almost any spell needed. I'm sure he can "find a way" through this situation.
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So much for not downplaying the effectiveness of magic to say nothing is wrong with the Fighter. Oh well.
A player with the right magic. The knowledge and tactics to use it properly. Is really not going to be worried about concentration checks. I cast invsibility. Or Vanish. Then use use summoning spells Or at higher levels attack spells and Greater Invisibility and Fly. Good luck trying to reach the character let alone finding him.
Why not say your simply going to walk into a wizards Tower and casually murder a sleeping caster. It's not as if he cast any protections spells or summoned a few creatures to guard him while he sleeps or anything.
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Ummm, how's Freddy even going to GET to the wreck? How's he going to breathe water when something inevitably tries to drag him under? How to find what they're looking for?(Meanwhile, my plan for the wizard would be along the line of: Fly up, Locate Macguffin, Disintegrate path to it, Hold/Stun guard, grab MacGuffin, leave. Summon aquatic help if needed. If wizzo does it right, there won't even BE a fight.)
As I said I wish those who say Fighters as a class have no flaws. Would not ignore or pretend to ignore how powerful magic is. It does not make a player using a Wizard unstoppable. Yet with the right combination of spells, feats and summoned creatures. Damn close imo. Espcially if given enough time.
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Nah, they're fairly linked, but the Fighter's and sins with the system extend beyond the fighter class itself. I would argue that the fighter's very existence is part of the reason we have these long feat trees. Back in 3.x, Fighters were considered more "special" because they could achieve certain feats in a sort-of-timely fashion, especially when feats were only gained once every 3 levels.
Problem is, the existence of the Fighter and feats being designed around how fast a Fighter could potentially acquire them, rather than what levels they are actually appropriate as their own abilities, makes other classes actively worse. Barbarian, Paladin, and Ranger are good classes from the core rulebook, and fit pretty well in a party with the rest of the core classes (even wizards), but many feats will be more or less ignored because of their prerequisites. There's little incentive for them to bother with the majority of combat feats because of the crazy feat trees.
Meanwhile, the crazy feat trees aren't actually helping the fighter either, because they force the fighter to waste tons of their class features (which are supposed to be making up for their lack of all those sexy class features the other classes have) in an attempt to do things like "make 1 attack against each foe in reach" or "get +2 to hit and +4 to damage with one weapon" (costs 4/10 feats, is "fighter only", and is outright inferior to the boosters of other martial classes like Quarry, or even divine favor, a 1st level Paladin spell).
In essence, there are fairly deep issues for martials that only exist because the fighter exists. At its roots, the system was designed around the idea that the Fighter was THE martial guy, and the Fighter was the baseline by which all other martial things were compared. And that's a pretty low bar to be anchored to.
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Humorously, the fighter's class feature of allowing them to replace the combat feats they selected at early levels is almost useless since you cannot replace a feat that's a prerequisite and you can only replace a feat every 4 levels. This means you can only retrain up to 5 feats over the course of 20 levels, and you have to retrain backwards, making them near useless as you take off the highest block of your pyramid to begin laying the lowest block of another. It is so hard to actually make use of the Fighter's ability to repick feats, its only real function is a false sense of security.
The Fighter should just be scrubbed and feats make more accessible to the real martial classes. Or redesigned from the ground up. But there's no point in bothering, because the Fighter doesn't represent anything. It has no direction or purpose aside from a mechanical allure of "feats, lots of feats". Everything else is just a class feature that improves some generic numerical bonus in an exceedingly minor way (for an example of what I mean by exceedingly minor, it takes you NINE levels to get to +2/+2 in hit and damage by virtue of weapon training, and that only functions for 1 weapon group, whereas classes like the barbarian have been doing that since 1st level; it takes them ELEVEN levels to get +3 to their maximum Dexterity allowance in armor and they have to have the Dex to support it, but it takes a Barbarian only EIGHT levels to get a +3 natural armor whenever they're raging and it stacks with everything).
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There are two changes that have zero mechanical effects but would make the game considerably better by changing how players and designers view fighters and feats:
1- Instead of feats and Fighter-only feats, give Fighters "Figther Talents" or whatever every couple levels. Include an option of "Bonus Combat Feat" that can be taken multiple times.
There! Now there's no need for long feat chains! Fighters having access to multiple feats will actually be seen as bonus, rather than a limitation to everyone else!
2- Change the Fighter's name to "Champion", "Paragon", "Warlord" or some such... Fighter is as bad as name as "Magic-user". Changing its name to something more epic will inspire players and designers to see the class as the paragon of physical combat it's supposed to be, instead of the "Warrior+" so many still view him as.
No changes to the actual rules, but the game would very likely be much better designed from that point on.
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snip
Aside from replacing feats being a bit dubious at times (Though even that has good use at lower levels, and higher if you're clever, especially with Armor and Weapon Training counting as a pre requisite for Mastery feats) I can't help but feel you're post is being a little dramatic.
Two or three years ago, I would smile wryly and be forced to agree with you, but as it is now, with many more feats that are useful and chains that are worth taking, Weapon Training and Armor Training offering options that make sense (Unique options that allow for an actual mastery of weapons and armor) making them real class features, and a bevy of archetypes that fit with the fighter's general motif and are good to boot (Not even mentioning a core fighter is also a real contender with any archetype) I think it's fair for them to be called a real martial.
And even if feat selection were made easier, and some of the more abysmal chains made to scale with level (Which they should), in such a world that lacks feat hell, the Fighter, a martial perfectionist, still has its place in the game.
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My only issue is that I need a PhD to make a competent fighter. Which I don't own, so I just stay away from fighter.
Why would I waste 10x the effort/time to achieve the same thing that can be done with a Barbarian?
My only issue is that I need a PhD to make a competent fighter. Which I don't own, so I just stay away from fighter.
Why would I waste 10x the effort/time to achieve the same thing that can be done with a Barbarian?
This really isn't true though.
The core line (CRB, APG, & ACG specifically) and the Weapon/Armor Master's Handbooks are enough for the fighter to be a competent class.
In 3.5 my group simply removed Fighters from the game for this reason. Or, more accurately, all martial classes were treated as a subclass of Fighter.
Full BAB classes and 3/4 BAB classes without spell casting were gestalted with Fighter other than the weapon/armor proficiencies.
3/4 BAB spell casters who topped out at 6th level spells (ie Bards) got 1/2 the Fighter feat progression.
Your effective fighter levels stacked when multi-classing. I thought it worked well since Fighters didn't get actual class features other than combat feats, and it served to make every other martial class a more interesting build.
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My only issue is that I need a PhD to make a competent fighter. Which I don't own, so I just stay away from fighter.
Why would I waste 10x the effort/time to achieve the same thing that can be done with a Barbarian?
This really isn't true though.
The core line (CRB, APG, & ACG specifically) and the Weapon/Armor Master's Handbooks are enough for the fighter to be a competent class.
Only five books to make a competent character? Yeah, sounds like everything's working just fine. Assuming there's some kind of market research indicating that people will keep pouring money down the drain to fix a faulty class. You realize that saying "The core line (CRB, APG, & ACG specifically) and the Weapon/Armor Master's Handbooks are enough for the fighter to be a competent class" just underscores how deeply ingrained the problems are, yes? I can make most classes into seriously awesome characters out of one book, maybe two. The Fighter needing an entire shelf to make a competent (note, competent, not something more positive) character is an issue in and of itself.
Also, the Weapon/Armor Master's Handbooks are band-aid fixes whose main benefit is making people feel like there's a solution. Virtually none of the Fighter specific options actually come online until 5th level or later, so you can fix your crappy skills right around the time everyone else is jacking their skills to a whole new level with magic or unique class features. The Fighter never actually catches up to any other class, he just gets somewhat less behind.
There are two changes that have zero mechanical effects but would make the game considerably better by changing how players and designers view fighters and feats:
1- Instead of feats and Fighter-only feats, give Fighters "Figther Talents" or whatever every couple levels. Include an option of "Bonus Combat Feat" that can be taken multiple times.
There! Now there's no need for long feat chains! Fighters having access to multiple feats will actually be seen as bonus, rather than a limitation to everyone else!
2- Change the Fighter's name to "Champion", "Paragon", "Warlord" or some such... Fighter is as bad as name as "Magic-user". Changing its name to something more epic will inspire players and designers to see the class as the paragon of physical combat it's supposed to be, instead of the "Warrior+" so many still view him as.
No changes to the actual rules, but the game would very likely be much better designed from that point on.
This is actually something I'm running into & don't know how I want to handle. On the one hand, having a plethora of combat styles / modifiers (spring attack & friends, vital strike & friends, two weapon fighting & friends, maneuvers, etc) available through combat feats to everyone makes sense. Then, the fighter's thing is being able to finish off multiples of those (because more feats would scale, trees would give more interesting behavior, etc) while other classes can't. In such a world where feats are powerful choices, does the fighter really need his own pool of talents? Rogues & Barbarians have their pool, but (generally) can't get combat feats in place of them. If the fighter got more skill points to play with for out of combat, and his other features improved in base power, does he really need his own list of special talents too? I feel like not, but that may also be me not wanting to come up with a list of fighter specific abilities.
Virtually none of the Fighter specific options actually come online until 5th level or later
This is actually a problem I have with a lot of things in Pathfinder currently. There's a lot of behavior that breaks natural character progression. Rage cycling, dex to damage coming online midway through a character's life, versatile training not coming online for so long. Basically these things, once unlocked, have you doing more or less exactly what you were doing before, but now to a much much higher degree. It's jarring. Going from 0 ranks in two skills to 9 in one level just feels wrong.
My only issue is that I need a PhD to make a competent fighter. Which I don't own, so I just stay away from fighter.
Why would I waste 10x the effort/time to achieve the same thing that can be done with a Barbarian?
This really isn't true though.
The core line (CRB, APG, & ACG specifically) and the Weapon/Armor Master's Handbooks are enough for the fighter to be a competent class.
Only five books to make a competent character? Yeah, sounds like everything's working just fine. Assuming there's some kind of market research indicating that people will keep pouring money down the drain to fix a faulty class. You realize that saying "The core line (CRB, APG, & ACG specifically) and the Weapon/Armor Master's Handbooks are enough for the fighter to be a competent class" just underscores how deeply ingrained the problems are, yes? I can make most classes into seriously awesome characters out of one book, maybe two. The Fighter needing an entire shelf to make a competent (note, competent, not something more positive) character is an issue in and of itself.
Also, the Weapon/Armor Master's Handbooks are band-aid fixes whose main benefit is making people feel like there's a solution. Virtually none of the Fighter specific options actually come online until 5th level or later, so you can fix your crappy skills right around the time everyone else is jacking their skills to a whole new level with magic or unique class features. The Fighter never actually catches up to any other class, he just gets somewhat less behind.
The content is available for free on the prd though.
And you probably don't need all of them, those just happen to be the big books. Arguably every class uses that many books. It's not about the fighter not being competent anymore, now people complain about the sources.
I'll agree with the notion that I would want a compilation book. Hell, they could do a whole series of compilation books that compile the most popular archetypes, feats, and variants.
Could be a whole new line of products, and since we have precedent of them reprinting Player Companion options in the RPG line, we can actually get some of the 'safer' non OGL content like the Armor/Weapon Master's Handbooks.
Paizo give me money!
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Also, the Weapon/Armor Master's Handbooks are band-aid fixes whose main benefit is making people feel like there's a solution. Virtually none of the Fighter specific options actually come online until 5th level or later, so you can fix your crappy skills right around the time everyone else is jacking their skills to a whole new level with magic or unique class features. The Fighter never actually catches up to any other class, he just gets somewhat less behind.
I actually just view them as very nice archetype options rolled together. They don't really fix anything though. The power curve of Fighters is the problem. Not the options. Sidegrades are great. But if they are balanced like a new weapon in TF2 it wouldn't fix a bad class.
Regardless, the Fighter's core concept would require a PHD to build well. You need it to find good weapons in Pathfinder.
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the Fighter doesn't represent anything.The game needs a class that doesn't represent anything. The alternative is a cancerous proliferation of classes to try to represent everything.
If I want to play someone who isn't defined by his temper, his racism, his horse, his gun, or the alignment system I can be a fighter or a rogue derivative, a 6 level caster, or a swashbuckler that is even worse than the fighter.
Some class needs to be the generic multi-purpose modular fighting man.
Yeah but the generic multi-purpose modular fighting man is bad at being a generic multi-purpose modular fighting man.
If he was actually decentgood(Anyone can be decent at anything, you choose classes to be good at a particular thing) at fulfilling all your generic multi-purpose modular fighting man needs I don't think it'd be as annoying of an issue as it is.
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I see Favored Enemy less racism and more like studying how something works down to its core to deal with it better, something I'd expect monster hunters to do more often honestly.
Really, all classes should be generic with specialization coming from Class Talents and/or Archetypes.
The game needs a class that doesn't represent anything. The alternative is a cancerous proliferation of classes to try to represent everything.
If I want to play someone who isn't defined by his temper, his racism, his horse, his gun, or the alignment system I can be a fighter or a rogue derivative, a 6 level caster, or a swashbuckler that is even worse than the fighter.
Some class needs to be the generic multi-purpose modular fighting man.
Rangers are only racist if that's how you want to justify their class feature. To me it's makes much more sense that the Ranger simply studies the behavior, weaknesses and vulnerabilities of a certain type of prey... As any good hunter would do.
And Fighter are just as defined by their weapon as any Gunslinger.
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Welp. This is probably going to only add fuel to the proverbial fire, but there is one thing that I've learned for sure from this thread. Fighters aren't the ones causing issues. It's those g*~~~@n wizards.
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When that prey is people, as it almost always is, they're racists.
Replace the word "prey" with "enemy", then, if you want to be pendantic... Doesn't matter. There's nothing inherently racist about Rangers. They are simply particularly good at fighting a certain type of enemy. You don't have to hate or disdain the enemy... You're just good at fighting them. You can pick your own race as a FE! And unlike 3.5 you don't even have to be evil anymore... And even if you did, being evil doesn't necessarily mean you're racist either.
You're taking a very specific roleplaying choice and and pretending it's an inherent part of the class.
And there's a difference between a guy with a sword that is like thousands of other swords, who can even pick up another completely different sword and still be okay and a guy whose entire concept revolves around being from Alkenstar and having an ultra-rare and special gadget that other people can't fathom.
Guns aren't that rare... And Gunslingers also have full martial weapon proficiency. Fighter aren't that much better, considering how much they have to specialize in a single weapon.
It's been suggested before by some of my peers that I should just go play a Fighter instead of my typical 9-Spell Level Casters to mitigate the shenanigans my characters would employ not just with spells, but skills like Diplomancy, and yes, even Perform.
It wasn't until I got booted from that particular group that I realized that it had been a threat, not a suggestion.
Methinks Casters cause a wee bit more drama in terms of peer reaction and Fighter woes may come from Player disappointment that the baseline Martial may not have all the goodies it needs to shine across multiple spectrums outside of CMB and infinite-cast Full-Round Attack DPS.
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Welp. This is probably going to only add fuel to the proverbial fire, but there is one thing that I've learned for sure from this thread. Fighters aren't the ones causing issues. It's those g$!~&&n wizards.
Hey! My wizard is very pious, thankyouverymuch, and has a great relationship with several (probablynonevilasfarasyouknow) gods!
But the fighter doesn't shine at anything, it relies on feats and the hypothetical "full attack"... MAD, low skill points, few class skills, few class features that doesn't require begging the GM.
Wouldn't it be nice if it did, I suppose. I always viewed it as an intro class as applied to 3.5/PF. One to learn and branch out from. For newer players, I steer them towards other martials, after discussing with them what theyir preferred fighting style is and what they would like their PC to be capable of/resemble.
I'm messing around with archetype stacking now. Is there ANY combination of Fighter Archetypes that still synergizes with itself but swaps out literally ALL of Fighter's base traits. As in: Bravery, Armor Training, Weapon Training... I am willing to tolerate the mandatory fixed feats and losing Armor/Weapon Mastery. It would've been my riposte to their request. A Fighter that's not a Fighter anymore.
Hero Lab, awesome as it is, I don't think catches all the archetype overlap disqualifiers as I was so happy to stack Ustalavic Duelist, Dervish of Dawn, and Siegebreaker until I realized that they bumped unless it could be handwaved that the fixed level 1 feats consumed both a Fighter PCs starting feats at creation. It looks so dumb from a distance... aggro-rushing with a light blade single-handed. Makes me want to play one actually.
My character concept is a dandy thug. One who views himself as the classiest brute around. A gnarled fist wrapped over a filigreed wire-handled weapon of a gentleman. Mustache, vest, suspenders, pinstriped trousers, empty monocle, oxfords, and bowler hat optional. The meerschaum pipe is mandatory. "I'm your huckle-bearer."
This thread was supposed to be about Fighters... and this argument kind of is a rebuttal against the OP statement seeing as people are in discord over other classes' features now.
Why are we quibbling about Rangers? I've joked about their Favored Enemy traits being "Fantasy RPG Racism Rewarded" with other PCs, particularly Rangers ^_^ and others who have acquired Favored Enemy, but it was always sarcastically delivered. Did not expect other people to get into such a fuss about it.
Ditto on Hatred, actually, I always trade that racial trait out for something else because I do not like my PCs having that in their stats. Mechanically, what are the odds of those being constant opponents, and Fluff, I don't have that much hate in my heart.