A while ago, I was discussing the fighter with some folks on the forums, and it came to my attention that part of the fighter’s lack of flair stems from its generality. It has no specific focus, and thus it suffers in its gameplay (in terms of boringness, not mechanically). One solution I thought of was to compare the fighter to a wizard or a cleric in the sense that wizards and clerics have a crazy number of archetypes that make a very generally class have a specific feel. A wizard who is an evoker is a blaster, while an enchanter focus on mind control or a light cleric is a healer, while a war cleric has a focus on combat. Even though the wizard and cleric are very general classes (it basically comes down to casting spells) each archetype provides a different feel and different options.
Shout out to mellored, onion druid, tempest_stormwind, sterlingrat for your ideas and comments that lead to this, you guys have great advice :D
Therefore, I propose giving the fighter more archetypes that have a thematic feel to them and allow individual fighters to stick out and have options. I think the fighter as is will be relatively unchanged in terms of class progression with the exception of the archetypes.
I also feel that remarkable athlete from the Champion fighter should be a base class feature rather than an archetype specific ability. If you have more ideas for an archetype or want to comment on an ability or whatever please feel free to do so. Any homebrew should be thoroughly scrutinized, particularly because I’m am so prone to oversight.
Most of the abilities I thought of come from somewhere in the players handbook, dungeon master’s guide, or monster manual. There are some that I made up, but I made these with previous context in mind (a notable example is the slayer, who is largely based off the Warhulk from 3.5). There is no way outside of rigorous testing to determine whether the final results will be fair and balanced, however, I like tot think of this as a rough draft, let you guys tell me what you think and we can work together to create a less general fighter.
Quick note, I thought about including samurai and knights as archetypes, but I just feel like that’s really more of a paladin thing given oaths and duties. Also, Brawler fighter got left out because I felt that the combination of the tavern brawler feat and grappler feats pretty much summed up what the brawler was. The same goes for the Cavalier fighter and the mounted combat feat.
9 archetypes is a pretty crazy number, but I just kept thinking about how many different playstyles could be covered. I proabbly went overboard and this is likely to never come to fruition, but it was a fun thought experiment. Thank you all again for reading this, and I look forward to your commentary so we can make this work :D
The Defender Archetype does what the Dodge Action already does better. To be honest, from what I'm seeing, you're just using the general combat rules and giving them to a class feature. Not really a reason to take these paths over what's already available. Heck, the DMG states that all classes can Disarm, they just have Disadvantage. Fighters are just good at doing it due to a special training. I could see allowing them to do something better than others, but that's what the Battle Master fighter's for.
Also the Cleave feature is way too overpowered. I would recommend making it "Choose a number of creatures adjacent to you equal to your Proficiency Bonus. You may attack these creatures as your attack action this turn, but all enemies gain Advantage on their Attack Rolls against you until the start of your next turn." Someone that attacks and doesn't move (As it's written) could just use half their movement to stand from prone, giving a level 3 character with (Potentially a +5 Str Mod) the ability to hit up to 5 creatures for free with no penalty.
Great Cleave, even back in 3.5 wasn't this OP. It had the condition that you had to fell the target to keep going. And even then, it burned three feats to do it. The Frenzied Berserker Prestige Class back in 3.5 allowed them to just go at it, regardless, but even then, it was limited. They basically lost their minds when they raged and had almost no control on when they did. They could stub their toe and fly into a rage and try to kill everything around them. As a picture I read the other day stated "Frenzied Berserker: If it moves, hit it. If it doesn't move, push it over. If that doesn't work, it's probably a tree." Sorry, going off on a tangent. Point is, it needs a lot of work.
I'm available if you'd like someone to work with to edit these features farther.
steelwulf99 wrote:
transcendantviewer wrote:
transcendantviewer wrote:
transcendantviewer wrote:
mr.troutz wrote:
I don't feel like these follow what the fighter archetypes now really do... Like kensei for example gets the third level abilities of an eldritch knight... minus the spell casting. But then later it becomes pretty overpowered imo.
They are flavorful but seem kind of overpowered.
If I was going to fix fighters.... Under the assumption that they taper off after 10 because they don't get anything new really.... I would probably make a bunch of fighter prestige classes as fighter secondary archetypes (such as iaijutsu master and some other oriental adventures prcs) that give them wildly new abilities, hopefully in part expanding on some of the other pillars aside from combat while also assuring their martial dominance. But then you'd probably have to up the power level of all martial classes, so maybe the answer is make martial prcs that continue martial progression while adding more abilities past 10. Or something idk. For a second I started second guessing that urge because would just adding MORE abilities overpower martials??? Not really considering the power all spell casters get. Why not give them a whole 10 level prcs worth of extra abilities on top of what they already get. Or that's crazy idk. But then idk if there is a way to really balance martial ability versus magic. But that doesn't make it an unworthy challenge to attempt...