Step 1: Initial Choices
First, you need to start with a vision in mind about what kind of fighter you want to be. Start by picking a weapon or weapons that you like (be it ranged, two-handed, one handed, or dual wield styles). From here, you can go and come up with a couple of basic strategies for yourself.
Step 2: Basic Tactics
Next, you must come to grips with one thing about reality; except at low levels, dealing damage is rarely an effective tactic to winning combat. Sure it needs to be done eventually, but you will make your job a lot easier by disabling your opponent first. To do this, you are probably going to want to use one of the following tactics:
Disarm: If you have a flail, ranseur, whip, or similar items, disarming your opponent is likely to be your primary method to disable him. By knocking your opponent's weapon out of his hand, you prevent him from making a full attack with it (which means less damage to you), and he provokes an attack of opportunity by picking it up (which means you get your attack back that you spent disarming him).
Grapple: If your opponent is smaller than you, a spellcaster, or you are wielding a light weapon or have improved unarmed strike, grabbing your opponent may be the best move since your opponent cannot make the best use of his primary abilities (can't cast spells or use his larger weapons). It also grants your rogue the ability to sneak attack your foe. This is also handy if you want to capture but not kill your foe.
Sunder: If you are wielding a two-handed weapon (or maybe even a one-handed weapon not capable of disarming or tripping), sundering is probably going to be your best bet. In doing so, you destroy your opponent's weapon which ensures that he cannot turn it against you. Don't worry too much about lost treasure, particularly if you disarmed him of his first weapon and he chose to quick draw a secondary weapon instead, since not needing to expend items to protect you from his blade will make up for some of the lost treasure.
Trip: If you wield a flail, chain, guisarme, halberd, or whip (or even if you are not), tripping your foe is a very potent action. Your opponent will most certainty stand up again, which provokes an attack of opportunity, plus you will recieve a +4 bonus on your iterative attacks do to your opponent being prone. Also, this will limit your foe to only one attack on their turn. Also, this works against non-humanoid opponents, unlike sunder and disarm.
Step 3: Feats
Feats no doubt are what separate a fighter from everyone else, so I'm going to go through all the feats that are really useful to a fighter.
Blind-Fight: If your wizard likes to cast darkness, this is a must have feat since it will give you an advantage under the area of the spell. Also, if you are the dungeoneering type this will give you an advantage if you accidentally drop your torch in water or you need to sneak around.
Combat Expertise: If you fight sword and shield style, you can use this feat to put your AC through the roof. It also serves as a gateway to several very important feats: improved disarm, improved trip, and whirlwind attack.
Improved Disarm: If you like to use the disarm tactic, this is most certainly the feat for you. If you have combat expertise, you should definitely take either this or improved trip.
Improved Feint: If you have levels of rogue, this is a good feat to take. Otherwise, the lost iterative attack usually makes this less useful than other feats.
Improved Trip: If you want to trip your opponent, definitely take this feat. Even if you have improved disarm, you should probably take this feat eventually for those situations where disarming isn't so good.
Whirlwind Attack: If you have a strength that is too low for power attack, you should definitelyworkyour way to this feat, and even if you do, it is a pretty useful ability when you are surrounded by multiple foes. As a note, if you take your first three levels as ranger, paladin, or barbarian, then take two levels in fighter, a human can get this feat by level five rather than six.
Combat Reflexes: This feat is useful in conjunction with your improved trip or disarm feats, since this gives you the opportunity to react to something else in addition to your foe standing up or picking up his weapon.
Dodge: The +1 bonus to your AC is pretty useful, and you'll want to pick it up eventually, particularly if you want to go whirlwind and spring attack.
Mobility: Since you will occasionally need to change your location, such as to block an enemy fighter who is approaching your wizard or if you need to retreat, this feat can be useful for cases like this. Usually though, grab it only if you want spring or whirlwind attack.
Spring Attack: The main advantage of this feat is that it forces your opponent to give up his iterative attacks to approach you.
Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Since exotic weapons let you do more than martial ones, this might be a good pick up. However, you might fare just as well to stick with a martial weapon and put the feat into a special ability one.
Great Fortitude: Since your constitution and basic fortitude saves are allready pretty high, you can probably pass on this one.
Improved Critical: You'll want to pick this one up eventually, particularly if you use an ax, since you need to deal damage eventually, but start with getting an ability feat.
Improved Initiative: More useful than you would think, the original roll for initiative can make or break your match with rogues or spellcasters.
Improved Unarmed Strike: If you want to be able to grab your opponent, this is a must take feat. Oddly, if you use a reach weapon, it makes a good pick. If the wizard steps towards you to avoid the reach of your glaive, they just made themselves kickable once they begin casting a spell.
Improved Grapple: Even better against spellcasters is grabbing them, since they will generally be able to cast none of their spells. Even if they have still spell, this still forces them to make a pretty hefty concentration check.
Deflect/Snatch Arrows: Unless you play a martial artist, these feats won't help you because your hands are liable to be full.
Stunning fist: This is very useful against enemy spellcasters, particularly if you don't want to make yourself vulnerable by grabbing them. It helps if you actually have a few levels in monk and/or a high wisdom. I believe you can also take the ability focus feat to improve the DC of your stunning fist.
Iron Will: Since wizards and such get some nasty spells that will stop you instantly that allow will saves, such as hold person, this gives you a fair shot at being able to survive those.
Lightning Reflexes: This is less important than iron will, since these spells typical only deal damage, which you can shrug off to some extent, but it never hurts to have it, particularly once your wizard gets a little excited with the fireballs.
Mounted Combat Tree: If you want to fight from horseback, ignore everything I've said up to this point and get this entire tree, then go read everything I've said. The power attack tree matches up great with this, since your extra damage will be multiplied by your spirited charge feat.
Point Blank Shot Tree: If you want ranged combat, definitely research this entire tree, and mingle in the dodge tree. Keep moving.
Power Attack: For many, this is likely to become the secret of your success. While at low levels, the feat itself is not likely to help you much, it grants you access to improved sunder and cleave, and cleave is very useful at low levels.
Cleave/Great Cleave: These are very useful for when you get swarmed by weak foes. In some situations, great cleave is even better than whirlwind attack. Cleave should probably come either right before or right after improved sunder.
Improved Bull Rush: Use this feat to push your opponent into a hazardous object or to clear a doorway to let your friends enter.
Improved Overrun: You might find this useful if you need to run past another fighter in order to get to the spellcaster in the rear.
Improved Sunder: If you get power attack, you will probably want to get this at some point. Don't be shy about using it, and definitely get an adamantium weapon.
Quick Draw: Particularly after level six, this feat becomes useful for drawing replacement weapons (when yours gets disarmed or sundered, or if you need something else for a particular foe, or even if you had a ranged weapon out and now you need to fight in melee.
Rapid Reload: If you use a sling or crossbow (like my halfling ultimate fighter build) this is a must have feat.
Toughness: The 3 hp are probably too little to make this feat worth taking.
Two-weapon Fighting Tree: If you want to use two weapons, this is a must have feat. The rest of the members in the tree you might want to hold off on until you take some of the special ability feats or other such stuff. Consider making both weapons be the same light weapon so your other feats stack.
Weapon Finesse: If you use a rapier or light weapons, and your dex is at least two points higher than your strength, than this is probably a feat you will want to take.
Weapon Focus: Since this makes you more likely to hit, this is of great benefit to you, particularly at lower levels. It also increases your odds of using any of your special abilities.
Weapon Specialization: If you use sunder a lot, this is a must have feat. Otherwise, you can delay it a few levels until you have a couple special abilities. You'll want it eventually though.
A generic fighter might do line up his feats for the first ten levels like this: weapon focus, combat expertise or power attack, 2nd: improved trip or cleave, 3rd: Improved Disarm or Cleave, 4th: Weapon Specialization, 6th: Dodge, Improved Initiative, 8th: Greater Weapon Focus, 9th: Mobility or Improved Critical, 10th: Spring Attack or Quick Draw
The most important thing to remember is that you bought the feat, so use it!
Part 3: Which strategy?
Now that you have all of your fancy feats, it is time to figure out when to use them. Generally, you can fit your foes into one of the following categories:
Weapon in two hands: If you also have a two-handed weapon, you might want to just sunder his in two. If not, try to trip or grapple him, since this advantage will make it a pain to disarm or sunder.
Weapon and Shield: You have a wide variety of choices available to you. Sundering and disarming are both possible, but you could also trip or grapple him. Just keep in mind that he may be able to use his shield as a weapon, so definitely disarm him of that too.
Two-Weapon Fighting: Don't bother to grapple him, since he will be able to use his weapons while grappling. If you have spring attack, keep moving to deny him his iterative attacks. Tripping also works well for that. You can also sunder or disarm him of one of them, and he'll probably let it sit, but if you do both, he'll either try to disarm you or pick up both weapons simultaneously, which means that you only get one attack of opportunity (unless you have combat reflexes).
Spellcaster: Get up close and personal. If you have a throwable weapon, definitely ready it for when she casts a spell. Otherwise, go and try to grapple them. A wizard or sorcerer, you might consider attacking outright. Number one thing: Don't let them cast a spell! Nothing is worse than being hit by a cleric who casts righteous might. Also, you can disarm your opponent of her focii and components, especially her divine focus. Against a cleric, that probably hurts more than dealling them damage, and is more likely toworkin many cases.
Monsters: This is everything that doesn't wield a weapon, including a monk. These creatures you usually need to trip or grapple, and the latter is as dangerous as doing it on a character with two weapons since they can use their natural weapons in a grapple in the same manner. Thus, improved trip is very valuable. If you don't have this, you'll probably need to deal as much damage as possible in as short a time as possible, and hope you can outlast your opponent. If you have spring attack or even just mobility, keep moving to deny your opponent iterative attacks, which will usually be numerous at only -5 to the attack roll.
Part 4: Protecting Yourself
Now your DM has probably been reading this to, and will use these tactics with the next fighter-type that he cooks up. So what do you do?
Improved Disarm: If you suspect that your opponent might try to disarm you, invest in locked gauntlets and a two-handed weapon, both of which add considerably to your chances to prevent being disarmed. If you also have the feat, you still add it's bonuses when they try to disarm you. Improved Unarmed Strike, Quick Draw, and spiked gauntlets can all lessen the problem caused by a successful disarm attempt.
Improved Trip: This is liable to be a big problem. If you cannot make yourself bigger or more stable, you will probably want to either get very far away or go in and grapple him.
Improved Grapple: There is probably not much you can do about this except always carry a light weapon with you. Hopefully you have a rogue who will take advantage of your predicament.
Improved Sunder: Get an adamantium weapon and get it enchanted, which raises its hardness to 22. Since adamantium only ignores hardness of 20 or less, this makes it substantially harder to break. It also serves you well when you take improved sunder yourself. Also, becoming bigger or wielding a two-handed weapon makes it harder for your opponent to break.
I hope this has all been very useful to you all. Remember to use your feats.
The only thing, of course, is that I agree that some of them (such as the cleave tree, and improved trip) are near indispensable, but I have had to forgo them to get others (equally indispensable) or to meet PrC requirements. I do plan to take improved trip at next chance, but I may just have to forgo cleave tree for some time.
I should add (since you mentioned overrun at one point) that if you use a fighter with high dex and light armor, taking ranks in tumble might also help you get through some ranks of enemies to get to spellcasters in the rear. Just a thought...
Nice job!
I can't emphasise tactical use of feats enough, using everything you have at your disposal in a fight, and gearing up so you can take advantage of as many feats as you can is just the way to go.
You missed weapon choice though! Simple weapons like Longswords should be avoided unless you plan to use the standard feats of a Fighter to develop non-combat features and use the bonus feats to grant you improved potential. More flexible weapons are commonly better choices. The Light Flail is only slightly less potent in damage output but significantly better when you want to perform a number of special attacks - seeing as you have so many feats its generally a better idea to use weapons that have multiple methods of attack.
Daggers over Punching Daggers because you can throw them (and with magical returning ones that's very useful). Weapons that can be thrown can be used to do damage with a current weapon rather than drawing a different one. The damage isn't great, but if it does damage then it did damage. Quickdraw is still essential here, as you can throw a weapon multiple times.
Guisarme or Ranseur over a Glaive - because you can use them to greater effect and you have less fear of retaliation. The reason Fighters use the spiked chain is because it can use it to the fullest. Simple things like this, they have the feats to make use of multiple weapons and use them to their fullest potential. Feats like Far Shot make thrown weapons suitable in combat and Grenade like weapons a real threat.
Full Fighters should probably choose and stock on the weapons they can use with their feats, rather than weapons that only apply to some and be forced to switch weapons constantly in combat.
The final point I'll make is that if you do golfbag - do so with different weapons you'd want to take anyway. Get a Silver Dagger with an Adamantine Guisarme and a Cold Iron Light Flail rather than 3 different Glaives.
With weapon selection, the most important thing is to select weapons that match your intended feats nicely. Swords and axes are not as great a weapon as most people think they are because they do not mix with other feats very well. If you are a paladin, they work well because you will probably not have the feats to spend to take more than power attack-cleave-sunder as your ability feats. However, a fighter who plans on taking improved trip or disarm should take weapons that better mesh with those feats.
Of the guisarme, glaive, and ranseur, the guisarme is the best because while they all have reach, you can use the guisarme for sunder and trip attacks, while you can only use the ranseur for disarms (piercing weapons cannot be used for sunders) and the glaive for sunders. Between a ranseur and and glaive, I would actually say it depends entirely on what feats you plan on taking, if you go for the power attack chain, go for the glaive, but if you take combat expertise, you probably will want to take the ranseur. The flail (light or heavy) has the advantage of being able to do all three, trip, disarm, and sunder, and it has slightly higher damage than the guisarme or ranseur, but you don't have the advantage of reach. If you have a disproportionately high dexterity, the spiked chain probably is a dream, you can disarm or trip your foe with it, it has reach that can hit adjacent creatures, you can weapon finesse it, but you cannot use sunder with it, as it is a piercing weapon.
And as Zelphi was suggesting, definitely mix the properties of the weapons that you carry in your golf bag. You want to carry weapons made of different elements, that deal different damage types, at least one light weapon, and a projectile weapon or enough throwable weapons to last a while. Archers have a significant advantage of being able to get different types of ammunition cheaply, then can carry around a sword (slashing), and a mace (light bludgeoning). Of course, they cannot disarm, trip, grapple, or sunder weapons very well, because they don't have the feats and their weapons don't match very well. Alternatively, they could choose to carry a short sword and a flail, which allows them to trip or disarm pretty well, plus carry a light weapon that deals respectable damage for its size with a decent threat range.
Your article is perfect for roll playing but it completely dissects the game's role playing qualities. There is a reason that swords were the weapon of choice prior to the gun's invention.
Depending on the campaign, martial weapons can be much superior to exotic weapons... especially the really exotic ones. Longswords are a good example, as they are the primary weapon in most campaigns. They are everywhere; if you play in a standard campaign and find a magical weapon, odds are it'll be a longsword. If you specialize in mercurial greatsword, on the other hand, you're going to have to commission a magical one if you want one and Pelor help you if you get yours sundered when you are away from a city. The spiked chain, while an awesome weapon, is another one that you might never find "lying around." Just make sure you briefly talk to your DM about which weapons are available, which ones are common, and which ones you'll never see aside from the one you wield so you know what you're getting into.
I respectfully disagree with Mind Rogue about Weapon Specialization. If you are a typical fighter (that is, you generally use one weapon) you MUST get this feat at 4th level. This is the bread-and-butter of the Fighter, a feat from which every single hit you make for the rest of your career will benefit. Yes, this means that you will have to wait on Great Cleave, Whirlwind Attack, and some other feats you might want, but WS is useful in almost every situation as opposed to, say, 20% - 30% of them.
Finally, if you have access to non-core books and the DM allows them make sure to skim through them for feats. Don't get tricked by the "coolness" of all the feats. While non-core feats do tend to be cooler than the PHB feats they aren't as universally applicable, and with decent tactics the PHB feats are generally better (IMO). But if you see something there that perfectly fits your concept, go for it.
-Shaftiel
It's great if you use only one weapon, but many Fighters will use more than one because it suits them to do so. It can often be more beneficial to be using a suitable weapon in the way you want when you want to. You can't dictate when you'll need to use a longsword over a longbow, but you can make PBS and quickdraw count when you throw a dagger and still get benefits from Dodge and Mobility (though sadly not power attack anymore). Generally you'll make up the difference in damage by getting more overall attacks in by using flexible weaponry.
Next, you must come to grips with one thing about reality; except at low levels, dealing damage is rarely an effective tactic to winning combat.
Unless you're a Rogue.
Very nice article. I would like to add one small thing: the mobility of a fighter. Not being able to fly, even for a fighter with a longbow, can be extremely deadly. Against a wizard, sorcerer, dragon or what-have-you, it is of prime importance to pick up some Wings of Flying or Winged Boots along with a handful of Potions of Flying as soon as you can. If you are going against a wiz or sorc, be sure to down a Potion of Flying in addition to activating your boots, because he will likely do a targeted dispel on you and you'll fall ti your doom. If you have 2 effects active, by the time he gets around to dispelling the second effect he'll be cut to hell and within reach of your longspear for an AoO when he casts.
In addition, Potions of Freedom of Movement and Potions of Water Breathing couldn't hurt either. Just be sure to label them with pictures so your dumb fighter doesn't get them mixed up.
Again, great article. Please bold or underline the topics next time, though. My eyes are killing me!
If you have a disproportionately high dexterity, the spiked chain probably is a dream, you can disarm or trip your foe with it, it has reach that can hit adjacent creatures, you can weapon finesse it, but you cannot use sunder with it, as it is a piercing weapon.
I can go one better than a spiked chain--The Chain Lash (from Savage Species).
It has all the properties of a spiked chain (trip, disarm, reach, ability to strike adjacent foes), in addition to being able to be used as a double weapon (to take advantage of the TWF feats and related feats like Double Hit) and can also be used to make sunder attacks since it is a bludgeoning weapon.
Therefore, with this ONE weapon, you can pretty much cover your bases with any melee situation you can think of (trip, sunder, disarm, TWF, Reach etc). In addition, since it is a bludgeoning weapon, it also works against MOST creatures, since some creatures (especially undead) are resistant to slashing/piercing weapons.