Rogues do more damage than fighters.

[User3]

Paladins have spells and stuff, rangers have spells and stuff.

Fighters get feats.

And Rogues do more damage in melee and have skills and stuff.

Basically, the fighter gets hosed.

How about this: fighters get a d6 that adds to weapon damage every empty level.

Thoughts?

[User3]

PS

And use the 50 hp damage Save vs death optional rule.

[RandomCasualty]

The rogue's supposed to do more damage than the fighter. He's more fragile but he does more damage, and he needs stealth to avoid getting clobbered.

The fighter really needs to be more resilient, that's his problem. He needs something like d12 hit dice and all good saves.

[The_Hanged_Man]

IMX, fighters do more damage than rogues already. Rogues have more spectacular moments, like taking out a BBEG all by itself, but also have more lame moments where 3 rounds go by w/o a hit.

[Wrenfield]

One of my group's players took the time out to compile how many of our encounters over the last 4 months of play (2 different campaigns - 17 total game sessions - 83 encounters) actually contained adversaries that were resistant to Sneak Attack.

Meaning, creature types - Undead, Constructs, Oozes, Plants, Incorporeals, etc.

25% of all the adversarial creatures we faced were immune to Sneak Attack.

And those were the fights where the Rogue characters were in pretty dire straights to effectively contribute to the combat in comparison to the other party members.

I'm sure everybody elses campaign has different numbers, but in light of the average occurences where Rogues are not uber, we find the balance to be just right. In fact, the Rogue tends to be probably the most well-balanced of all the core classes.

****

If you need a power-up for the Fighter, by all means, do your best to acquire combat feats that help improve your attack options, tactical utility, and number of attacks. Avoid the stupid crit boost & damage/attack boost feats (Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialisation). Once you start getting spells like Enlarge Person, Polymorph, & PAO cast on you, damage/attack boosts start going through the roof.

And by all means, load up on the following (subject to your Fighter's unique m.o.):

1. Complete Warrior's 3 Excellent Tactical Feats = Shock Trooper, Elusive Target, & Combat Brute.

2. Karmic Strike + THF ... or ... Karmic Strike + Combat Reflexes + Double Hit + TWF. Barbarian Rage is a nice dip addition here. Note: the only time I would ever advocate a Fighter going the TWF route is to take the Chain (not the Spiked Chain) or Sword-n'-Board "Shield Bash" style - and do it with the combo I stated above.

3. Imp. Trip + Jotenbrud + Wolf Berserker. Again a dip into Barbarian to faciliate. Tripping is arguably the most effective sub-genre of melee combat in 3.5.

[User3]

Rogues are better fighters than fighters because:

1. A rogue must use some kind of great damage-avoiding technique to get his uber attacks(Hide in combat, surprise, full concealment, blink, etc). This means that he takes 80 to 100% less damage in every combat.

2. He can kill a dude(any dude) in one round, further shortening the combat, and thus his chances of being hit.

3. Schooling everyone 75% of the time does not make up for sucking 25% of the time. Ever.

4. Being as good as a fighter in combat makes being a fighter suck.

5. The fighter should not be forced to turn into a troll or a dragon(an ability not available to his class) just to compete with a character of similiar level. Aragorn does not turn into a War Elephant. Ever.

6. The fighter player should not be forced to read 3000+ pages of feats and PrCs, and then pre-plan all 20 levels of his career just to be effective.


Give the fighter a d6 every empty level, and people won't feel the need to take 15 PrCs to round out their 20th level fighting guy.

People take 20 levels of rogue all the time. No one takes 20 levels of fighter. Ever.

[The_Hanged_Man]

If you spot the rogue uber damage-avoidance over the fighter, than - OK. Yeah, rogues will be better.

But the fighter could get full concealment, too. I'm annoyed by the number of people who complaing that a rogue w/ improved invisibility just rocks. A fighter w/ full invisibility rocks, too. Compare apples to apples.

[Draco_Argentum]

Rogues are better than fighters because the rogue is a well designed class but the fighter is massively underpowered. This is old news.

In actual direct damage a decent fighter should be able to keep up with a rogue, the problem is that he sucks at everything else.

[Boulie_98]

1083619959[/unixtime]]People take 20 levels of rogue all the time. No one takes 20 levels of fighter. Ever.

I'm no one?

Granted, he used a 3.0 bow+arrows and had a cleric on a leash for the GMW effects.

[Username17]

Granted, he used a 3.0 bow+arrows and had a cleric on a leash for the GMW effects.

And you still would have been better off with levels of Ranger, Barbarian, Paladin, Deepwood Sniper, Order of the Bow, anything.

-Username17

[The_Hanged_Man]

Ain't that the truth. Anybody believe that "maximum combat versatility" makes the fighter competitive?

I wish I could take the spiked chain seriously enough to see what can be done with it. Seems like you could do some cool stuff.

[Wrenfield]

Fighter totally rock ..... only up to level 2 that is. For low-level melee or combatant characters, one of the worst things you can do for a 3 level stretch is to take Ftr3, Ftr4, & Ftr5 levels. Those 3 levels nets you 1 freakin' class feat. God, that sucks.

I can gar-on-tee you, that the best optimized combatant builds out there use pre-PrC baselines that look something like this:

Ftr2 / Barb2 / Rog3

Ftr2 / Rgr2 / Barb1

Ftr2 / Hexblade2 / Barb2 (for CHA warriors)

Etc. and so on. These baselines are all about early level mining for front-loaded goodies. Then you can finally find salvation in PrC Land. Yeah, these baselines suck when it comes to saving throws, but there are ways around that via spell and magic item support.

And you know, even for Fighter-heavy builds, a few level dip into Rogue (up to Rog-4 - for Uncanny Dodge) is rarely a bad thing even with the loss of 1 BAB.

I will go on record as saying I have for the sake of challenge built some pretty decent Fighter-20 builds. They all made serious investments in the augmented combatant feats from CW and the Miniature's Handbook. They also especially take advantage of the powerful Tactical feats in CW (especially Shock Trooper, Elusive Target, Combat Brute, etc.).

Spiked Chain builds can be fairly decent with Fighter-20. Primarily because the Spiked Chain is extremely hungry for feats in order to take advantage of its extreme utility. Once that Fighter-20 Spiked Chain Dude gets PAO'ed to a Kelvezu in the higher levels, all those feats and the Kelvezu goodies make for a frightening combination of melee power.

Otherwise, Fighter-20 sucks.

[RandomCasualty]

The fighter's main thing should be taking damage, not dealing it. The extra D6 just gets us into the nuke game, and simply trying to make it so that everything kills in one round is the worst way to balance stuff.

A fighter should have the best hit dice, and the second best saves (Second only to the paladin).

Also, I think the fighter and barbarian classes should be combined. Make rage a feat and give the base fighter uncanny dodge as a class ability. Somebody has to fill the tactical position of being the tank and the fighter basically is that someone. If we gave him some bonuses to saves as he progressed in level, and d12 hit dice, along with uncanny dodge and some of the other good defensive abilities, like mettle and maybe an ability to reroll a failed save once per day, I think we'd have a class that could possibly go 20 levels, or at least 10.

The fighter in concept isn't supposed to be a big damage dealer, that's the rogue and the wizard's job. The fighter is supposed to be the guy that stands up front, deals out medium damage, but takes in a lot of damage. He's the guy that should be shrugging off the finger of death, the hold person and the baleful polymorph.

It's not that fighter's can't kill things, its just that they don't do it by nuking targets to death, they do it by outlasting their opponents.

[Maj]

The fighter's main thing should be taking damage, not dealing it.

I thought the class was called the fighter. He's supposed to fight, not shield. If they wanted him to withstand everything, wouldn't they have called him the defender?

[User3]

Any argument that defends the fighter by saying "and then you PAO into a Kelvezu" is terrible. It does not defend the fighter at all. The fighter didn't learn how to swing a sword just to be useful only when a high level wizard lowered himself to waste a spell slot.

Any argument that defends the fighter by saying "and then by horribly specializing in this feat chain or these 15 PrCs, he gets good" is terrible. A class, to be balanced, should just get good abilities. Let the ranger be the scouty, druidy, woodsman guy, and let the paladin be the warrior priest(hell, maybe even take the offensive divine spells like Flame Strike off the class list for the cleric, and slap them onto his).

Just give the fighter a 1d6 die to weapon damage every level he doesn't get a feat. Then, he'd be a guy who was really good at fighting. In fact, he'd be a guy who was the premiere fighting guy.

We could call him "the fighter."

He would have an ability that is comperable to a high level rogue's perfect invisibility(Hide), the Wizard's Meteor Swarm, and the Cleric's Miracle.

[RandomCasualty]

1083710406[/unixtime]]
I thought the class was called the fighter. He's supposed to fight, not shield. If they wanted him to withstand everything, wouldn't they have called him the defender?

But the fighter doesn't fight by dealing massive amounts of damage. That's not what he does. He outlasts the enemy. He doesn't rely on his ability to kill the wizard or dragon in one round, he relies on sustaining the onslaught and keep attacking.

If every class is supposed to deal massive damage then the true classes that are supposed to do that as a concept, the wizard and the rogue are basically being shafted. The rogue is the basic assassin, he tries to gain surprise and end a fight very quickly because he's an inferior fighter in a straight one on one.

Every combat character can't try to fill the same role as a damage dealer. Strategically, someone has to be there as the wall that protects everyone else and tries to soak damage. If not the fighter, then who else?

[User3]

Characters who outlast better than the fighter:

A. The Mage: casting a Solid Fog, Wall of Force, Projected Image, Mirror Image, Silent Image, ect can tie up all of an ememies offensive ability for a anywhere to 1 round to an indefinate amount of time.

B. The Cleric: By casting healing spells only on himself, and by boosting his AC with Full Plate(Magic Vestment), PoE, etc., he can soak damage and avoid it.

C. The Rogue: By Blinking, Hiding, displacing, etc, the rogue can get full attack sneak attacks in combat and allow his enemies to waste an indefinate number of attacks on him. Not so much outlast as "totally roxxor your enemies in combat" to be fair, but being able to kill your enemies fast means that they get fewer attacks on you, which means that you last more combats and more enemies.

Shall I go on? I think every class is better at outlasting the fighter. Even the bard is capable of Charming a mass of monsters, thus soaking and distracting the enemy far better than one fighter.

[The_Hanged_Man]

I have to disagree. Fighters are weaker, as a class, than every other class. But this thread wasn't about fighters sucking, though. It's about rogues dishing out more damage than fighters. That's just not true IMX. I've even done some math to show it, even assuming rogues get sneak attack damage all the time.

Can you give me a concrete example of a rogue doing more damage than a fighter?

[RandomCasualty]

1083712070[/unixtime]]Shall I go on? I think every class is better at outlasting the fighter. Even the bard is capable of Charming a mass of monsters, thus soaking and distracting the enemy far better than one fighter.

Yeah and that's a problem. The fighter doesn't do what he's supposed to. He's a poor meat shield, and that needs to be fixed.

[Username17]

[quote="Fighters", PHB]On a team, it is his job to man the front lines, protect the other party members, and bring the tough opponents down.[/quote]

Fighters are supposed to be able to act as a meat shield and also as a spearhead against tough opponents. As written, they don't fulfill either job well.

-Username17