Another fighter thread, but not what you think [Archive] - Wizards Community

Another fighter thread, but not what you think [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Bowmore
10-13-06, 05:49 PM This is not a thread where we discuss what is wrong with the fighter. This is not a thread where we flame other people for having differing opinions on what the fighter should or shouldn't be. This is not a thread where we say "fighters are fine as they are." This is not a thread where we endlessly debate what SHOULD be done to the fighter.

I'd just like to reiterate: if you haven't altered the fighter class in any way for your game, please don't post here. This goes double for people who think the fighter is "fine the way it is." This is a thread for people who love the fighter and are tired of it being upstaged by casters and... well, pretty much every other class.

This is a thread where we discuss changes we have implemented to fighters in our games. Whether or not these changes have lasted for any significant amount of time is irrelevant; if the changes didn't last, why didn't they?

I'll start. In my current low-magic game, I gave the fighter 4 skills points instead of 2, added Bluff, Survival, and Heal to their class skills, and gave them the Warblade's maneuver & stance progression, with access to any six disciplines of their choice.

So far, things are going very nicely. We have a fighter, a hexblade, a psion, and a sorcerer, and even with the lack of a healer they're doing just fine. They've managed to use their wits (rather than their numbers) to overcome the obstacles I've thrown at them, which makes me very happy considering two of the players are new to D&D.
OneWinged4ngel
10-13-06, 05:53 PM I've started small with my Fighter changes, starting out by replacing it with Szatany's Ultimate Fighter (Which isn't really a very big power boost.)

I'm thinking of splitting up the Art of War progression to fill in the empty levels and start it up a little early, and making Counter Tactics and some other AoWs and another set of Arts of War alternate. For one, this helps some of the less optimal arts of war see some use (Compare counter tactics: brutes to Foil Action, for example) and buffs the fighter some more.
Tony Vargas
10-13-06, 06:23 PM One change I tried out in 3.0 was to let fighters double thier cross-class ranks (from fighter levels) when using a 'combat aplication' of a skill. The examples at the time were Feint (which didn't use BAB back then) and Tumble, but it could be used with any skill that had a direct bearing on combat (as opposed to just being used in a combat situation).

The probem I found was that players didn't care for the bookkeeping aspect (they were still multiclassing a lot). In 3.5, they 'fixed' Feint (sorta), so it didn't seem as critical.

I'd also added tons of fighter-bonus-apropriate feats for 3.0, though I'm less inclined to do so, now, with so many official feats already available in 3.5 ...

In another campaign, fighters gained Domains - but that was through a process of "Initiation" that was open to any non-archanist, so it wasn't exactly a change to fighters, specifically, more of a relative nerf to clerics, wizards & sorcerers (though it was motivated by setting issues, rather than balance considerations).
fatal error
10-13-06, 06:47 PM I'll start. In my current low-magic game, I gave the fighter 4 skills points instead of 2, added Bluff, Survival, and Heal to their class skills, and gave them the Warblade's maneuver & stance progression, with access to any six disciplines of their choice.

That's in addition to their bonus feats I take it? In which case I presume no one plays a Warblade?
Wolfvyn
10-13-06, 06:57 PM Well as I mentioned in another thread a while ago, back in 3.0 I created a special weapon technique system, simular to that of tome of battle's. This system wasn't limited to fighters. Everyone could learn these techniques, but since you needed a lot of feats as prereqs other classes wouldn't be able to capitalize on them as well. Basically how it worked is that the character would start studying a "technique school" and at the cost of experince would be able to learn that schools techniques. on school was all about maxmizing damage from a hit, another school was about getting more hits, a third school was about adding damage to hit (basically adding energy type damage), a fourth school was about weakening your opponent with hits (dazing, stunning, lowering speed, applying minues to abilities and ability related checks, ect) and the fifth school or the "master" school gave you interesting attack abilities (like attacking everything in an 15 foot arc). It used a modified spell point system, simular to psionics.

Unfortunately I never got to test it in actually game play. Neither of the two fighters I had in the campaing i was running at the time wanted to be bothered with it for two reasons. the first was that it cost a lot of experience to master the schools. The cheapest school to master cost about 12-15k xp if I remember correctly. The second was that they thought that at higher lvls it was overpowered. There was a feat you could take that would give you extra tech points and allowed you to combine techniques from different schools. For example you could combine the auto crit tech from the first school, with the pounce tech from the second school and an energy burst tech from the third school to deal some pretty spectactular damage. The ammount of exp required to master those three schools would be enough to make a lvl 15 character lvl 18, by then any full caster had 9th lvl spells so I figured it wasn't that big of a deal, but they disagreed.

I'm curently thinking of trying another change to the fighter class, basicaly I'm giving them free feats to help round them out. BAsically they'd get the weapon focus, weapon spec, gwf, gws, weapon mastery, iron will, lightning reflexes, shield specialization, armor specialization, combat focus, improved inititive, combat reflexes and weapon supremancy for free at certain lvls. I haven't decided if I will yet though, because isntead of making it a better full progession class I might just end up making it a must dip class.
Bowmore
10-13-06, 07:47 PM Originally posted by fatal error

That's in addition to their bonus feats I take it? In which case I presume no one plays a Warblade?

Nobody has played a warblade yet, but the campaign only just started (they reached level 2 last session) and there are only four players. I'll get back to you on this as soon as someone makes a warblade.

Also, warblades get different abilities than fighters. The warblade's bonus feats are much, much more specific than the fighter's, and they get abilities that rely on intelligence. Warblades also get uncanny dodge and improved uncanny dodge. So no, a fighter with a maneuvers & stance progression isn't a warblade. :pbbbtt:

Also, thanks for totally not contributing to the thread with changes you've made to fighters for your campaigns, and instead making a smarmy remark without adding anything to back it up.
fatal error
10-13-06, 08:51 PM Also, thanks for totally not contributing to the thread with changes you've made to fighters for your campaigns, and instead making a smarmy remark without adding anything to back it up.

Oh I'm so sorry that I sought to inquire how one of the posted variations played out. Clearly it would be ridiculous to do so if I was thinking of using it in my own game some time, right?

And I hardly think it is unreasonable to believe that the Warblade is in general worse than the Fighter with your change. He gets int to some things, and uncanny dodge. In exchange he loses a ton of feats, and the ones he gets are all pretty limited. Unless I was making a Duelist I would never play a Warblade with that change.
Thus, thinking my belief to be true and equally thinking it was pretty obvious that the Fighter was now Superior to the Warblade, I thought maybe you had just decided to scrap the Warblade all together, but hadn't mentioned it.
While you already think I'm smarmy; I find it interesting that there is indeed no one playing a Warblade.
Furthmore, do Swashbucklers, Rangers or Barbarians get any maneuver loving?

On the subject of saving the Fighter, I believe the only way to really 'save the fighter' while maintaining its original purpose, to be a piece of clay able to be molded into any fighting achetype, is by feats or prestige classes.
Obviously, Wizards seems to have chosen PrCs, at least so far, the Dervish, the Exotic Weapon Master, the Master Thrower and the Tempest being be best examples of this.
Each of those prestige classes could have been an extensive feat tree, or now a combination of feats and tactical feats in a tree. Sure then 'anyone' could take them, but only the Fighter could truly grab all the feats that would make him a master of a fighting style.
But instead they decided to creat weapon style Prestige Classes, which is why fighters always prestige out.

So my 'solution' to the Fighter class? Go with what Wizards wants, plan to prestige ASAP to follow what ever fighting route your character is going for. Light fighters go Duelist or Dervish, TWF go Tempest, Exotics dip into EWM, throwers go for MT. Because that seems to be how the Fighter was designed.

Of course, with the advent of more tactical feats and such, fighters may indeed come back into the mainstream, effectively staying fighter but gaining prestige class like abilities from their feats.
ssvegeta555
10-13-06, 09:05 PM My fighter is modeled off the Generic Warrior from UA. The bit below is taken from my houserule document.

Fighters are changed a lot to better suit their versatility. The fighter is the same except noted below: Fighters are now the most versatile class in the game. When at creation, the player may choose 6 skills that count as class skills; also they get craft for free. All feats are now bonus feats to a fighter (he still must meet the requirements as usual). Choose a save as a good save and the others are considered bad saves. For example: A player wants to make a swashbuckler fighter. At creation the 1st level fighter chooses Climb, craft (already for free), swim, tumble, balance, jump and escape artist. He also chooses reflex as his good save.

Another fix is that I use weapon groups presented in UA. It's a nice boost for the fighter and any other class for that matter.

So far this fix is working well. I havn't seen any problems yet. The fighter is the main tank pulling his own weight even with a cleric nearby and a whole slew of undead minions from the dreadnecro.
krossbow
10-13-06, 09:43 PM Armor DR. All good saves. 4 skill points. 1d12 hit die. No free feat at first level (I hate that "2 level dip" problem).

thats about it.
Xavon
10-13-06, 09:55 PM I give the fighter:

Weapon focus tree as class features (a first level fighter chooses a weapon and gets WF at level 1, WS at level 4, IWF at level 8, and IWS at level 12). They can still take the feats for other weapons normally.

No first level feat (other than above)

Choice of:
d12 HD
4 Skill points/level
Good Will save
Sapp
10-13-06, 10:16 PM My most modest, moderate fixes to the Fighter:

Balance should be a class skill. (Balance should be to a Fighter what Knowledge (Arcana) should be to a Dragon Shaman. As an aside, it's a travesty that a pure Dragon Shaman could know less about dragons than a pure monk).

To a lesser extent Listen, Spot, and Tumble are valid as well. Perhaps we could give the fighter some choices out of the four: Balance, Listen, Spot, and Tumble... or maybe some others.

PHBII should be Core.

More Combat Form feats.

Combat Stability should boost the fighter's opposed rolls against Sunder as well as all the others (grapple, bull rush, disarm, etc).

You should be able to gain Combat Focus more than once during an encounter. Perhaps 1d4 rounds after losing it (to prevent the fighter from recursively expending combat foci on Combat Strikes).

Some item prices should be lowered. Helm of Teleportation? Too expensive. Having a caster on the party is mandatory anyway, so really the only purpose of this Helm is to help the noncasters get out of situations that their class abilities [or lack thereof] fail against. Not to mention that it's a very niche item.

Many items' caster levels should be boostable (incurring price adjustments, of course), at least up to 20th. Winged Boots can even be dispelled by a chump, at the most inconvenient of times.

New items and enhancements should be introduced. A weapon enhancement that grants the weapon a chance of dispelling/disintegrating/disjoining indestructible force effects (wall of force, for example).

There should be a mid- to higher-level fighter bonus feat that increases movement speed. Boots of Striding are fine, but the cost is significant if I have to tack that ability along with other abilities ("winged" comes to mind as one possibility). Melee need their speed to close the distance. Ranged need their speed to obtain and maintain the distance.

That's all that immediately come to mind. I might add more later. I'm trying to stay reasonable and moderate.
Alten_Freehands
10-13-06, 11:20 PM Heres one that I came across in a group I played in for a little while. You get the option to trade a bonus feat for a class abillity or from another class.

The group fighter could sneak attack as a rogue of 1/3 or 1/2 his level. I think it cost her two feats.

At every 4th level the fighter also go an extra +1 to hit and +1 to damage. At the time I felt this was a little broken, but now I don't know.
Wolfvyn
10-13-06, 11:25 PM Personally i don't see why a fighter can't gain or expend multiple combat foci in an encounter. A Psychic warrior or a Psion can do the same reasonably well with his psionic focus if he takes the psychic meditation feat. Maintaining and expending a psionic focus gives a Psychic warrior or a Psion a far greater benefit than maintaining or expending a combat focus does a fighter.
Seerow
10-13-06, 11:28 PM Since when does keeping Psionic Focus give the Psiwar Fast Healing 4, awareness of enemy HP, +4 to Will Saves, and +4 against most combat maneuvers?

Psionic Focus is much weaker than Combat Focus.

Also, Combat Focus can only be expended via a single high level feat, for a bonus to hit and damage. I personally don't think said feat is worth it.
Wolfvyn
10-13-06, 11:44 PM A psionic focus gives you a boost to speed, allows you to run up walls and a few other things i can't remember at the momment. One benefit you can gain from expending it is a significant chunk of additonal damage. There are a few other things you can do with it, I haven't played a psion in a while so i'd have to look it up.

While the fast healing 4 and a +4 to will saves are good, you need to have two additional combat focus feats besides combat stability and combat focus itself in order to gain that. Also an awareness of enemy hp doesn;t mean you know exactly how much they ahve left, it merey tells you the enemys overall condition. You'd know tha frost giant you and your party have been fighting is significantly hurt, but not that he only has 10 hp left.
Sapp
10-14-06, 02:22 AM Combat Awareness is precise.

"While maintaining your cambat focus, you learn the current hit point total of each adjacent opponent and ally."

It's explicit.

Knowing the "overall condition", as you say, can be done by casual observation. Combat Awareness has far more precision. It might not mean your PC can scream "The Frost Giant has 12 HP left! Don't waste anything more than a magic missile on him!" but it does mean that your PC can make precision decisions in combat based on the information. And I'm sure your PC would be able to say, "The left giant is more injured than the right one! Hurry! A light gale could knock him down!"

If you have 3 or more Combat Form feats, you get Blindsight up to 5 feet.

It's a metagaming feat, but so is Vatic Gaze and many others.
Lina_Inverse
10-14-06, 04:59 AM The biggest fighter effect changes i always use.

Fighters have good willsaves-In 2E fighters had the best saves at high levels(the worst at low though.) This slightly preserves that flavor, fighters are just tough, and that means they need to be tough verus magic too.

Fighters use d12 hitdice-Barbarians should not have more hp than fighters damnit.

Fighters get mettle at third level-Hey, with good will and fort saves this is a pretty usefull.

All secondary attacks are at -5-The big one, monsters use this rule and it works well, so i use it for weapons too. It does great things to meleeist viability at 11+, ok not THAT great but it does a good bit.
UnknownMourner
10-14-06, 07:30 AM Weapon Focus and Tactical Feats seem the most fightery to me. Giving a few for free hasn't broken our game. I give one out at 3rd, then every +4 levels, so they get +5 tacticals or weapon foci over 20 levels. it also grants that focus at 3rd so they can flesh out elsewhere and still hit the spec.
Otto the Bugbear
10-14-06, 08:09 AM I've got some rather extensive changes to the fighter, which can be found here. (http://boards1.wizards.com/showpost.php?p=10246817&postcount=1) Actually, that contains fighter, swashbuckler and barbarian changes.

Not only does he get more skills and 4 skill points per level, but he's actually designed to make use the swift and immediate actions in a more tactical sense. He also toughens up during combat by being able to fight through status and ongoing effects without penalty.

You'd really have to read the thread to see everything, unless I just plain post the entire thing here.

It was a drawn out process to get to that point. I heavily used materials from a couple of threads on this board (Fighter's Discussion Thread 2.0 and Races of War).

As for using it, I just moved so I haven't had a chance yet to see it in play. I've modeled a couple of quick characters, and it looks fine on paper, but the true test comes with actual gameplay.

Cheers

Otto :)
1CentSage
10-14-06, 08:21 AM My personal changes to the fighter so far involved the creation of additional feats usefull at high levels, "scaling" feats whose benefits depend on level (changed WFocus and WSpec into scaling feats for example. I had a list of feats posted somewhere on the old boards, but I can not find it at the moment). In most of my campaigns I also give the fighter 4 skillpoints and a good Reflex save. The fighter's skill selection is also larger than usual since in my campaigns there are no cross class skills or class skill lists anymore.
Wolfvyn
10-14-06, 10:58 AM Combat Awareness is precise.

"While maintaining your cambat focus, you learn the current hit point total of each adjacent opponent and ally."

It's explicit.

opps you're right, I forgot. I also mixed up combat stabilty and combat vigor. heh my memory isn't what it used to be. Which is a shame since I'm still pretty young.

Though combat awareness only works for adjacent foes and allies. It helps you when deciding what your next action is going to be, but isn't really that big of a direct help.

So far most of the posts seem to be more feats, better feats and more class skills and skill points.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Bowmore 10-13-06, 05:49 PM	This is not a thread where we discuss what is wrong with the fighter. This is not a thread where we flame other people for having differing opinions on what the fighter should or shouldn't be. This is not a thread where we say "fighters are fine as they are." This is not a thread where we endlessly debate what SHOULD be done to the fighter. I'd just like to reiterate: if you haven't altered the fighter class in any way for your game, please don't post here. This goes double for people who think the fighter is "fine the way it is." This is a thread for people who love the fighter and are tired of it being upstaged by casters and... well, pretty much every other class. This is a thread where we discuss changes we have implemented to fighters in our games. Whether or not these changes have lasted for any significant amount of time is irrelevant; if the changes didn't last, why didn't they? I'll start. In my current low-magic game, I gave the fighter 4 skills points instead of 2, added Bluff, Survival, and Heal to their class skills, and gave them the Warblade's maneuver & stance progression, with access to any six disciplines of their choice. So far, things are going very nicely. We have a fighter, a hexblade, a psion, and a sorcerer, and even with the lack of a healer they're doing just fine. They've managed to use their wits (rather than their numbers) to overcome the obstacles I've thrown at them, which makes me very happy considering two of the players are new to D&D.
OneWinged4ngel 10-13-06, 05:53 PM	I've started small with my Fighter changes, starting out by replacing it with Szatany's Ultimate Fighter (Which isn't really a very big power boost.) I'm thinking of splitting up the Art of War progression to fill in the empty levels and start it up a little early, and making Counter Tactics and some other AoWs and another set of Arts of War alternate. For one, this helps some of the less optimal arts of war see some use (Compare counter tactics: brutes to Foil Action, for example) and buffs the fighter some more.
Tony Vargas 10-13-06, 06:23 PM	One change I tried out in 3.0 was to let fighters double thier cross-class ranks (from fighter levels) when using a 'combat aplication' of a skill. The examples at the time were Feint (which didn't use BAB back then) and Tumble, but it could be used with any skill that had a direct bearing on combat (as opposed to just being used in a combat situation). The probem I found was that players didn't care for the bookkeeping aspect (they were still multiclassing a lot). In 3.5, they 'fixed' Feint (sorta), so it didn't seem as critical. I'd also added tons of fighter-bonus-apropriate feats for 3.0, though I'm less inclined to do so, now, with so many official feats already available in 3.5 ... In another campaign, fighters gained Domains - but that was through a process of "Initiation" that was open to any non-archanist, so it wasn't exactly a change to fighters, specifically, more of a relative nerf to clerics, wizards & sorcerers (though it was motivated by setting issues, rather than balance considerations).
fatal error 10-13-06, 06:47 PM	I'll start. In my current low-magic game, I gave the fighter 4 skills points instead of 2, added Bluff, Survival, and Heal to their class skills, and gave them the Warblade's maneuver & stance progression, with access to any six disciplines of their choice. That's in addition to their bonus feats I take it? In which case I presume no one plays a Warblade?
Wolfvyn 10-13-06, 06:57 PM	Well as I mentioned in another thread a while ago, back in 3.0 I created a special weapon technique system, simular to that of tome of battle's. This system wasn't limited to fighters. Everyone could learn these techniques, but since you needed a lot of feats as prereqs other classes wouldn't be able to capitalize on them as well. Basically how it worked is that the character would start studying a "technique school" and at the cost of experince would be able to learn that schools techniques. on school was all about maxmizing damage from a hit, another school was about getting more hits, a third school was about adding damage to hit (basically adding energy type damage), a fourth school was about weakening your opponent with hits (dazing, stunning, lowering speed, applying minues to abilities and ability related checks, ect) and the fifth school or the "master" school gave you interesting attack abilities (like attacking everything in an 15 foot arc). It used a modified spell point system, simular to psionics. Unfortunately I never got to test it in actually game play. Neither of the two fighters I had in the campaing i was running at the time wanted to be bothered with it for two reasons. the first was that it cost a lot of experience to master the schools. The cheapest school to master cost about 12-15k xp if I remember correctly. The second was that they thought that at higher lvls it was overpowered. There was a feat you could take that would give you extra tech points and allowed you to combine techniques from different schools. For example you could combine the auto crit tech from the first school, with the pounce tech from the second school and an energy burst tech from the third school to deal some pretty spectactular damage. The ammount of exp required to master those three schools would be enough to make a lvl 15 character lvl 18, by then any full caster had 9th lvl spells so I figured it wasn't that big of a deal, but they disagreed. I'm curently thinking of trying another change to the fighter class, basicaly I'm giving them free feats to help round them out. BAsically they'd get the weapon focus, weapon spec, gwf, gws, weapon mastery, iron will, lightning reflexes, shield specialization, armor specialization, combat focus, improved inititive, combat reflexes and weapon supremancy for free at certain lvls. I haven't decided if I will yet though, because isntead of making it a better full progession class I might just end up making it a must dip class.
Bowmore 10-13-06, 07:47 PM	Originally posted by fatal error That's in addition to their bonus feats I take it? In which case I presume no one plays a Warblade? Nobody has played a warblade yet, but the campaign only just started (they reached level 2 last session) and there are only four players. I'll get back to you on this as soon as someone makes a warblade. Also, warblades get different abilities than fighters. The warblade's bonus feats are much, much more specific than the fighter's, and they get abilities that rely on intelligence. Warblades also get uncanny dodge and improved uncanny dodge. So no, a fighter with a maneuvers & stance progression isn't a warblade. :pbbbtt: Also, thanks for totally not contributing to the thread with changes you've made to fighters for your campaigns, and instead making a smarmy remark without adding anything to back it up.
fatal error 10-13-06, 08:51 PM	Also, thanks for totally not contributing to the thread with changes you've made to fighters for your campaigns, and instead making a smarmy remark without adding anything to back it up. Oh I'm so sorry that I sought to inquire how one of the posted variations played out. Clearly it would be ridiculous to do so if I was thinking of using it in my own game some time, right? And I hardly think it is unreasonable to believe that the Warblade is in general worse than the Fighter with your change. He gets int to some things, and uncanny dodge. In exchange he loses a ton of feats, and the ones he gets are all pretty limited. Unless I was making a Duelist I would never play a Warblade with that change. Thus, thinking my belief to be true and equally thinking it was pretty obvious that the Fighter was now Superior to the Warblade, I thought maybe you had just decided to scrap the Warblade all together, but hadn't mentioned it. While you already think I'm smarmy; I find it interesting that there is indeed no one playing a Warblade. Furthmore, do Swashbucklers, Rangers or Barbarians get any maneuver loving? On the subject of saving the Fighter, I believe the only way to really 'save the fighter' while maintaining its original purpose, to be a piece of clay able to be molded into any fighting achetype, is by feats or prestige classes. Obviously, Wizards seems to have chosen PrCs, at least so far, the Dervish, the Exotic Weapon Master, the Master Thrower and the Tempest being be best examples of this. Each of those prestige classes could have been an extensive feat tree, or now a combination of feats and tactical feats in a tree. Sure then 'anyone' could take them, but only the Fighter could truly grab all the feats that would make him a master of a fighting style. But instead they decided to creat weapon style Prestige Classes, which is why fighters always prestige out. So my 'solution' to the Fighter class? Go with what Wizards wants, plan to prestige ASAP to follow what ever fighting route your character is going for. Light fighters go Duelist or Dervish, TWF go Tempest, Exotics dip into EWM, throwers go for MT. Because that seems to be how the Fighter was designed. Of course, with the advent of more tactical feats and such, fighters may indeed come back into the mainstream, effectively staying fighter but gaining prestige class like abilities from their feats.
ssvegeta555 10-13-06, 09:05 PM	My fighter is modeled off the Generic Warrior from UA. The bit below is taken from my houserule document. Fighters are changed a lot to better suit their versatility. The fighter is the same except noted below: Fighters are now the most versatile class in the game. When at creation, the player may choose 6 skills that count as class skills; also they get craft for free. All feats are now bonus feats to a fighter (he still must meet the requirements as usual). Choose a save as a good save and the others are considered bad saves. For example: A player wants to make a swashbuckler fighter. At creation the 1st level fighter chooses Climb, craft (already for free), swim, tumble, balance, jump and escape artist. He also chooses reflex as his good save. Another fix is that I use weapon groups presented in UA. It's a nice boost for the fighter and any other class for that matter. So far this fix is working well. I havn't seen any problems yet. The fighter is the main tank pulling his own weight even with a cleric nearby and a whole slew of undead minions from the dreadnecro.
krossbow 10-13-06, 09:43 PM	Armor DR. All good saves. 4 skill points. 1d12 hit die. No free feat at first level (I hate that "2 level dip" problem). thats about it.
Xavon 10-13-06, 09:55 PM	I give the fighter: Weapon focus tree as class features (a first level fighter chooses a weapon and gets WF at level 1, WS at level 4, IWF at level 8, and IWS at level 12). They can still take the feats for other weapons normally. No first level feat (other than above) Choice of: d12 HD 4 Skill points/level Good Will save
Sapp 10-13-06, 10:16 PM	My most modest, moderate fixes to the Fighter: Balance should be a class skill. (Balance should be to a Fighter what Knowledge (Arcana) should be to a Dragon Shaman. As an aside, it's a travesty that a pure Dragon Shaman could know less about dragons than a pure monk). To a lesser extent Listen, Spot, and Tumble are valid as well. Perhaps we could give the fighter some choices out of the four: Balance, Listen, Spot, and Tumble... or maybe some others. PHBII should be Core. More Combat Form feats. Combat Stability should boost the fighter's opposed rolls against Sunder as well as all the others (grapple, bull rush, disarm, etc). You should be able to gain Combat Focus more than once during an encounter. Perhaps 1d4 rounds after losing it (to prevent the fighter from recursively expending combat foci on Combat Strikes). Some item prices should be lowered. Helm of Teleportation? Too expensive. Having a caster on the party is mandatory anyway, so really the only purpose of this Helm is to help the noncasters get out of situations that their class abilities [or lack thereof] fail against. Not to mention that it's a very niche item. Many items' caster levels should be boostable (incurring price adjustments, of course), at least up to 20th. Winged Boots can even be dispelled by a chump, at the most inconvenient of times. New items and enhancements should be introduced. A weapon enhancement that grants the weapon a chance of dispelling/disintegrating/disjoining indestructible force effects (wall of force, for example). There should be a mid- to higher-level fighter bonus feat that increases movement speed. Boots of Striding are fine, but the cost is significant if I have to tack that ability along with other abilities ("winged" comes to mind as one possibility). Melee need their speed to close the distance. Ranged need their speed to obtain and maintain the distance. That's all that immediately come to mind. I might add more later. I'm trying to stay reasonable and moderate.
Alten_Freehands 10-13-06, 11:20 PM	Heres one that I came across in a group I played in for a little while. You get the option to trade a bonus feat for a class abillity or from another class. The group fighter could sneak attack as a rogue of 1/3 or 1/2 his level. I think it cost her two feats. At every 4th level the fighter also go an extra +1 to hit and +1 to damage. At the time I felt this was a little broken, but now I don't know.
Wolfvyn 10-13-06, 11:25 PM	Personally i don't see why a fighter can't gain or expend multiple combat foci in an encounter. A Psychic warrior or a Psion can do the same reasonably well with his psionic focus if he takes the psychic meditation feat. Maintaining and expending a psionic focus gives a Psychic warrior or a Psion a far greater benefit than maintaining or expending a combat focus does a fighter.
Seerow 10-13-06, 11:28 PM	Since when does keeping Psionic Focus give the Psiwar Fast Healing 4, awareness of enemy HP, +4 to Will Saves, and +4 against most combat maneuvers? Psionic Focus is much weaker than Combat Focus. Also, Combat Focus can only be expended via a single high level feat, for a bonus to hit and damage. I personally don't think said feat is worth it.
Wolfvyn 10-13-06, 11:44 PM	A psionic focus gives you a boost to speed, allows you to run up walls and a few other things i can't remember at the momment. One benefit you can gain from expending it is a significant chunk of additonal damage. There are a few other things you can do with it, I haven't played a psion in a while so i'd have to look it up. While the fast healing 4 and a +4 to will saves are good, you need to have two additional combat focus feats besides combat stability and combat focus itself in order to gain that. Also an awareness of enemy hp doesn;t mean you know exactly how much they ahve left, it merey tells you the enemys overall condition. You'd know tha frost giant you and your party have been fighting is significantly hurt, but not that he only has 10 hp left.
Sapp 10-14-06, 02:22 AM	Combat Awareness is precise. "While maintaining your cambat focus, you learn the current hit point total of each adjacent opponent and ally." It's explicit. Knowing the "overall condition", as you say, can be done by casual observation. Combat Awareness has far more precision. It might not mean your PC can scream "The Frost Giant has 12 HP left! Don't waste anything more than a magic missile on him!" but it does mean that your PC can make precision decisions in combat based on the information. And I'm sure your PC would be able to say, "The left giant is more injured than the right one! Hurry! A light gale could knock him down!" If you have 3 or more Combat Form feats, you get Blindsight up to 5 feet. It's a metagaming feat, but so is Vatic Gaze and many others.
Lina_Inverse 10-14-06, 04:59 AM	The biggest fighter effect changes i always use. Fighters have good willsaves-In 2E fighters had the best saves at high levels(the worst at low though.) This slightly preserves that flavor, fighters are just tough, and that means they need to be tough verus magic too. Fighters use d12 hitdice-Barbarians should not have more hp than fighters damnit. Fighters get mettle at third level-Hey, with good will and fort saves this is a pretty usefull. All secondary attacks are at -5-The big one, monsters use this rule and it works well, so i use it for weapons too. It does great things to meleeist viability at 11+, ok not THAT great but it does a good bit.
UnknownMourner 10-14-06, 07:30 AM	Weapon Focus and Tactical Feats seem the most fightery to me. Giving a few for free hasn't broken our game. I give one out at 3rd, then every +4 levels, so they get +5 tacticals or weapon foci over 20 levels. it also grants that focus at 3rd so they can flesh out elsewhere and still hit the spec.
Otto the Bugbear 10-14-06, 08:09 AM	I've got some rather extensive changes to the fighter, which can be found here. (http://boards1.wizards.com/showpost.php?p=10246817&postcount=1) Actually, that contains fighter, swashbuckler and barbarian changes. Not only does he get more skills and 4 skill points per level, but he's actually designed to make use the swift and immediate actions in a more tactical sense. He also toughens up during combat by being able to fight through status and ongoing effects without penalty. You'd really have to read the thread to see everything, unless I just plain post the entire thing here. It was a drawn out process to get to that point. I heavily used materials from a couple of threads on this board (Fighter's Discussion Thread 2.0 and Races of War). As for using it, I just moved so I haven't had a chance yet to see it in play. I've modeled a couple of quick characters, and it looks fine on paper, but the true test comes with actual gameplay. Cheers Otto :)
1CentSage 10-14-06, 08:21 AM	My personal changes to the fighter so far involved the creation of additional feats usefull at high levels, "scaling" feats whose benefits depend on level (changed WFocus and WSpec into scaling feats for example. I had a list of feats posted somewhere on the old boards, but I can not find it at the moment). In most of my campaigns I also give the fighter 4 skillpoints and a good Reflex save. The fighter's skill selection is also larger than usual since in my campaigns there are no cross class skills or class skill lists anymore.
Wolfvyn 10-14-06, 10:58 AM	Combat Awareness is precise. "While maintaining your cambat focus, you learn the current hit point total of each adjacent opponent and ally." It's explicit. opps you're right, I forgot. I also mixed up combat stabilty and combat vigor. heh my memory isn't what it used to be. Which is a shame since I'm still pretty young. Though combat awareness only works for adjacent foes and allies. It helps you when deciding what your next action is going to be, but isn't really that big of a direct help. So far most of the posts seem to be more feats, better feats and more class skills and skill points.