Martial Training

[Liir]

Fighter dedication doesn’t provide much benefit to Barbarians, Paladins, and Rangers and there has been a lot of discussion about creating Combat Feats and the gating of weapon styles behind the Fighter Dedication feat. A believe a simple fix for this issue is to just bake access to the fighter class feats into the three other martial classes.

You would replace Sudden Charge from Barbarian and Double Slice from Ranger with the following class feat. For the Paladin you would just add it to their class feats available (they currently only have three class feats at level one)

Martial Training (Feat 1) <Ranger, Barbarian, or Paladin>
Gain one fighter feat. For the purposes of meeting its prerequisites, your fighter level is equal to half your level (minimum of 1).
Special You can select this feat more than once. Each time you select it, you can gain a new fighter feat.

[Asuet]

Multiclassing into a specific class will never be as powerful for all classes. Some classes always get more out of it. That's not a problem and never will be a problem.

[Liir]

Asuet wrote:

Multiclassing into a specific class will never be as powerful for all classes. Some classes always get more out of it. That's not a problem and never will be a problem.

I agree with your post. Though I lead my post with Fighter Dedication being mostly useless for those three classes, skipping the multiclass feat was a perk of the suggestion, not the main point.

Barbarian, Ranger, and Paladin have historically been described as martial classes. The fighter class feats are basically combat feats from PF1E. Several of the fighter class feats are already duplicated in the three classes, a trend that would likely continue in future supplements.

Granting them easier (though limited) access to the fighter class feats allows for more customization right now and in the future, removes cross-class duplication, and doesn't increase their overall power (except skipping one feat).

[master_marshmallow]

I'd rather see each weapon group contain it's own archetype, that can start at lvl1, gated by proficiency. These archetypes can be inclusive to other types of archetypes.

It keeps them separated.

[Tholomyes]

For me, I think the main issue and one I've stated in the past is that fighters cover a broad set of conceptual spaces, and thus it is hard to build a class that does any of those spaces justice. In 1e archetypes did a reasonable job in essentially establishing the base class as a chassis that individual archetypes develop further, to the point that I think an archetypeless fighter is pretty much a mistake for most character builds.

In 2e however, it feels like they're trying to use feat exclusivity as a crutch for this, as they know that they can't do what they were able to do with archetypes in the core book, and while there are some feats that seem reasonable for a fighter exclusive (I happen to like the notion of the fighter as the master of reactions, if someone so chooses), most feats would be best served as a pool of feats, selectable as class feats, but not exclusive to any class or archetype. This would leave the fighter stripped of most of their feats, leaving the design team with the problem of how to create feats for, arguably the conceptually broadest character class in the game, but this is a space where they don't need to reinvent the wheel. In 1e, they created a number of options throughout the years of what to do for weapon and armor training past the first, be they exclusive (see most archetypes) or modular (advanced weapon/armor training). Not all will fit in 2e, and there might not be enough to allow for a character concept to have perfectly suited feats at all levels, but I think it would go a reasonable way to ensuring that fighters feel like they are the best with their weapon, even if they don't get things that the other martial classes do, like rangers with animal companions, or Barbarians with totem-specific feats, ect, and the inclusion of universal skill feats, which makes their out of combat options more on a level playing field.

My one worry, though, at least in the early days of PF2e, is that such a system might create the potential where non-fighter martials feel like they can prioritize their combat style and a second area of their class (like the aforementioned animal companion or totem options) where fighters are a mostly straightforward build, where you don't really have choice, and your feat selection is "what is my combat style's feat at this level" but given that I suspect supplements will create a breadth of options that eventually give any flavor of fighter a new breadth of mutually competing options, I'd prefer this to the overly locked version of what are reasonably universal martial feats.

[Fuzzypaws]

I'd also prefer class feats to be more reflective of each class's special schtick. With more general combat feats either separated by weapon group (Power Attack belonging to swords / axes / hammers for instance) or just a broader combat feat pool, that any class (or at least any martial class) can just dip into. Maybe say martial classes can dip combat feats with their class feats, caster classes can dip "magic" feats (metamagic etc) with their class feats, and any class can dip either of these pools with their general feats.

[Arachnofiend]

Asuet wrote:

Multiclassing into a specific class will never be as powerful for all classes. Some classes always get more out of it. That's not a problem and never will be a problem.

God, do you have a justification for every problem with PF2? I have no idea how someone can defend a paradigm where Wizards get practically infinite feats out of the Fighter dedication and Paladins get nothing. If nothing else, the dedication needs a hard nerf to make it less attractive to every Wizard who can afford the strength to carry a breastplate. Armor proficiency goes up one step, you get proficiency in exactly one martial weapon.

[Dragonborn3]

To say nothing of Rogues that want Double Slice. Heck, even Monks since as far as I can tell Double Slice is just a better Flurry of Blows. You can even combine them if you don't need to move!